Efficacy of different intensities of percutaneous electrolysis for musculoskeletal pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was conducted to determine the effect of ultrasound-guided percutaneous electrolysis (PE) alone or as an adjunct to other interventions on pain intensity generated by musculoskeletal disorders, depending on the intensity of the technique.
Data Sources: PUBMED, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, SCOPUS, Health Medical Collection, and CINALH from inception to September 2022 were searched to identify documents.
Study Selection: Publications investigating the effect of ultrasound-guided PE in musculoskeletal pain.
Data Extraction: Data were extracted into predesigned data extraction and tables. Risk of bias was evaluated with the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool (Rob 2.0). Thirteen articles met inclusion criteria.
Data Analysis: Random-effects meta-analysis models were used to quantify the difference in pain between the PE and control groups.
Data Synthesis: A significant reduction in pain was found in favor of low- (-1.89; 95% CI: -2.69; -1.10; p < 0.001) and high-intensity PE (-0.74; 95% CI: -1.36; -0.11; p : 0.02) compared to control group. Low-intensity PE showed significant reduction in pain in the short (-1.73; 95% CI: -3.13; -0.34; p < 0.02) and long term (-2.10; 95% CI: -2.93; -1.28; p = 0.005), with large effect sizes compared to control group. High-intensity PE only showed significant lower pain than control group in the long term (-0.92; 95% CI: -1.78; -0.07; p < 0.03), with a small effect size, but not in the short term.
Conclusion: We found small evidence suggesting that low-intensity PE could be more effective for musculoskeletal pain reduction than high-intensity PE. Nevertheless, scientific evidence on this subject is still scarce and studies comparing the two modalities are warranted.
Systematic Review Registration: www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero, identifier CRD42022366935.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2023 Sánchez-González, Navarro-López, Cañada-Sánchez, Juárez-Vela, Viñaspre-Hernández and Varela-Rodríguez.)