The physiotherapy treatment of
low back pain (LBP) with physical stimulation offers different possibilities of application. Until now, the
physical therapies used in LBP are
laser therapy, ultrasonotherapy and currents. We conducted a clinical trial in order to verify whether shockwave
therapy, which is very effective in treating
tendinopathies and fracture consolidation delays, leads to clinical and electromyographic improvement in patients affected by LBP. We randomized thirty patients affected by LBP treated with
shock waves (shockwave group) or a standard protocol characterized by rehabilitative exercises (control group). At one and three months, the patients treated with shockwave
therapy showed clinical improvement measured by VAS scales (p=0.002; p= 0.02), and disability evaluated with Roland scales (p=0.002; p=0.002) and Oswestry (p=0.002; p=0.002). At three months, the patients treated with
shock waves, showed a significant improvement in terms of values of amplitude of the sensory nerve conduction velocity (SNCV) of the plantar medialis nerve (left: p=0.007; right: p=0.04), the motor nerve muscular conduction (MNCV) of the deep peroneal nerve (left: p=0.28; right: p=0.01) and recruitment of motor units of finger brevis extensor (left: p = 0.02; right: p=0.006). In the control group, there was a trend to increase the clinical and electromyographic results without statistical significance. The preliminary results suggest a good applicability of shockwave
therapy in the treatment of LBP, in accordance with the antiinflammatory, antalgic, decontracting effects and remodeling of the nerve fiber damage verified in previous studies conducted on other pathological models. Future research will allow us to verify the integration of this
therapy into a rehabilitation protocol combined with other
physical therapies.