• Xianfei Xie, Jialing Zhu, and Hao Zhang.
• Department of Traumatology, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2020 Aug 28; 99 (35): e21749.

BackgroundOsteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, and is a major cause of disability and chronic pain in adults. However, there is very limited evidence in the scientific literature to support the effectiveness of extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) in human knee osteoarthritis. This retrospective study aimed to compare the efficacy of ESWT treatment with sham-ESWT on pain, walking speed, physical function, and adverse effects in knee osteoarthritis.MethodsThis study will be performed and reported in accordance with the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology checklist. We reviewed patients diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis at our academic center from 2016 to 2017. This retrospective cohort study was approved by the institutional review board in Ruijin Hospital. The primary outcome measure was pain on movement measured by a 100-cm visual analog scale. The secondary outcome measures included the Western Ontario and McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index, range of motion, and adverse effects. Statistical analysis was performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20.0 (IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY). A P-value of <.05 was defined as statistical significance.ResultsThe hypothesis was that ESWT would be an effective treatment for improving pain and physical function in knee osteoarthritis to control symptoms.Trial RegistrationThis study protocol was registered in Research Registry (researchregistry5801).

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