Extracorporeal shock wave therapy | Treatment of Osgood-Schlatter disease

Extracorporeal shock wave therapy

A more recent therapeutic approach is the so-called ESWT, extracorporeal shock wave therapy, which has so far mainly been used to destroy kidney stones. However, ESWT can also be used to treat tendon calcifications or bone inclusions and ossicles. Whereas in the early days of ESWT the patient had to lie in a kind of filled bathtub into which shock pulses were delivered, the treatment device has now shrunk to the size of a hand.

The device is simply placed on the skin and can destroy the underlying bone fragments with pinpoint accuracy. After resounding success in the destruction of kidney stones, this method is now increasingly being used to treat Osgood-Schlatter’s disease. One treatment takes about 10 minutes, but several treatment cycles are necessary (usually 3-5).

In order to avoid any pain, a local anesthetic, i.e. a local anaesthetic is applied to the area to be treated before the treatment. Since this is a relatively new procedure, experts are still divided on the effectiveness of this therapy as of 2015. It may be necessary to wait for long-term studies, but some doctors speak of treatment success rates between 70 and 80%. In any case, ESWT (occasionally also RSWT, for “radial shock wave therapy”) can represent an alternative to surgery in the treatment of Osgood-Schlatter’s disease.

All articles in this series:

  1. Treatment of Osgood-Schlatter disease
  2. Causal therapy
  3. Extracorporeal shock wave therapy