Clinical benefits of early cold therapy in accident and emergency following ankle sprain.

The Use of Ice in the Treatment of Acute Soft-Tissue Injury

“…34,36,38 In general, blinded application of treatment intervention was also poor; none of the studies blinded the therapists administering therapy, and just one group of subjects 57 was blinded. In addition, in all but four trials 6,19,36,59 there was insufficient blinding of outcome assessment. Intention to treat analysis was adequately performed in just one study, 26 and eight 10,11,27,34,35,47,51,57,64 supplied adequate information on patient dropout.…”

Is ice right? Does cryotherapy improve outcome for acute soft tissue injury?

“…The well-designed study by Sloan et al 12 was conducted in a UK emergency department (1989). One hundred and forty-three patients had a single 30 min cryotherapy session using a cooling anklet applied by a physiotherapist.…”

Low-Level Laser Therapy and Cryotherapy as Mono- and Adjunctive Therapies for Achilles Tendinopathy in Rats

“…Decreasing the temperature of the skin and underlying soft tissue reduces blood flow by causing a sympathetic vasoconstrictor reflex of the smooth muscle component on the vessel wall (Ho et al, 1994;Knobloch et al, 2007;Gregson et al, 2011). The cold-induced vasoconstrictor response and subsequent reduction in blood vessel diameter can help to reduce the amount of edema (Sloan et al, 1989;Deal et al, 2002;Schaser et al, 2007), which contains a large number of inflammatory cells.…”