Primary Care Sports Physician, Sports Medicine Department, Apollo Hospitals, 21 Greams Lane, Chennai
Online published on 27 April, 2016.
Heterotopic Ossificans, rare complication of sporting injury, needs a definite awareness about it and its management. Studies have reported the management to be largely conservative, with few authors reporting shockwave therapy usage to be encouraging. Though shockwave therapy has betten promising, yet there is very little scientific underpinnings on its therapeutic use in heterotopic ossification. Here I report a unique presentation of heterotopic ossification in an exercise enthusiast and the effect of shock wave therapy in the management of the same. Further a narrative review of similar work in literature has been done.
To review literature to establish evidence on the effect of shockwave therapy in heterotopic ossification management and to report personal experience.
Case Report and Narrative Review.
A systematic review was conducted online using medical data bases including Medline, PubMed, and Google Scholar, as per PRISMA guidelines. The search strategy combined key words expanding the terms ‘heterotopic ossification’ for population, ‘shockwave’ for intervention, and ‘pain, range of motion, return to activity’ for outcome. Predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied.
Of the 35 articles assessed for eligibility, only 2 articles were included in qualitative analysis. Current evidence suggests positive effects of shockwave therapy in management of sports injury related heterotopic ossification, in the form of significant pain reduction and improvement in range of motion.
Evidences supporting the use of shockwave in heterotopic ossification in sports person has been anecdotal and very limiting, necessitating large scale randomised trial for a beer clinical interpretation and guideline laying.
Heterotopic Ossification, Paraosteoarthropathy, Myositis Ossificans, Shock Wave Therapy, Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy
