Efficacy and safety of corticosteroid injections and other injections for management of tendinopathy: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Abstract

None.

Corticosteroid Injections Give Small and Transient Pain Relief in Rotator Cuff Tendinosis: A Meta-analysis

“…There are no known disease-modifying treatments. The ability of a corticosteroid injection to relieve symptoms ascribed to rotator cuff tendinosis is debated, with prior meta-analyses reaching different conclusions [15,24,27]. We performed a meta-analysis including several new prospective randomized controlled trials comparing corticosteroid and placebo injections [31,37,45], and using the Furukawa method [21] of calculating the NNT for a reduction in pain intensity to mild or less.…”

“…1). We also found five more studies using additional data sources: one by contacting authors and four from previous systematic reviews [15,17]. After review of full text, 72 articles did not fulfill the inclusion criteria.…”

“…The reasons for wide use of corticosteroid injections for rotator cuff tendinopathy may include training or habit, to satisfy the patient's desire to intervene, for remuneration, and other factors, but it is not clear that corticosteroid injections outperform placebo injections. The effectiveness of corticosteroid injections for pain relief in patients with rotator cuff tendinosis is debated despite numerous prospective randomized trials and several systematic reviews [5,15,24,25,27,36,50]. The first four systematic reviews regarding this topic did not conduct a meta-analysis [5,24,32,50].…”

“…The first four systematic reviews regarding this topic did not conduct a meta-analysis [5,24,32,50]. The results of two meta-analyses [15,24] reached different conclusions.…”

“…Since the last systematic review in 2010 by Coombes et al [15], there are four new prospective randomized controlled trials of corticosteroid injections for rotator cuff tendinosis [31,37,44,45]. Furthermore, previous systematic reviews characterized the effect size with pooled standardized mean difference (SMD) alone and categorized the SMD values, both of which provide information of limited use to clinicians and patients [13,16,34].…”