A recent study on grade IV knee osteoarthritis, which is considered severe osteoarthritis compared Physical Therapy alone to physical therapy combined with shockwave therapy. The group receiving Shockwave therapy showed an 82% Improvement in functional ability compared to just 48% in the physical therapy alone group.
This an umbrella review which is kind of a meta-analysis of all the other meta-analyses where they took the data from 8 other meta-analyses that looked at shockwave for arthritis and concluded, “All studies concluded that ESWT is effective for knee osteoarthritis”, but then later in the paper, they stated that one of the 8 meta-analyses found that the effectiveness decreased with time, but that “This decline in efficacy can be prevented by repeating ESWT at every time interval or maintaining the same activity despite pain.”
So in other words, most people should find that there is significant pain relief for osteoarthritis within 4-6 sessions and occasional ongoing ESWT or exercise would be advisable, similar to starting an exercise program, where you can’t work out to build muscle and then expect the muscle to stay strong if you never work out again. However, despite the decreasing effectiveness over time, that same paper said, “The function and pain of individuals with knee OA significantly improved at the majority of follow-up time periods compared to baseline levels”. In other words, even without occasional ongoing sessions, most people were still better off than they were before they ever had shockwave.
