A controlled clinical pilot trial to study the effectiveness of ice as a supplement to the exercise programme for the management of lateral elbow tendinopathy.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied the intervention named in the title in this controlled clinical trial publication.

To investigate whether an exercise programme supplemented with ice is more successful than the exercise programme alone in treating patients with LET.

Why It Was Studied

The use of ice as a supplement to an exercise programme has been recommended for the management of lateral elbow tendinopathy (LET).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults.

Patients were evaluated at baseline, at the end of treatment, and three months after the end of treatment.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a pilot study.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger study would be practical.

The exercise programme consisted of slow progressive eccentric exercises of wrist extensors and static stretching of the extensor carpi radialis brevis tendon.

In the exercise programme/ice group, the ice was applied after the exercise programme for 10 minutes in the form of an ice bag to the facet of the lateral epicondyle.

Outcome measures used were the pain visual analogue scale and the dropout rate.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Combined Modality Therapy, Cryotherapy, Exercise Therapy, Ice, Pain Measurement, Pilot Projects and Tennis Elbow.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a pilot study.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2006 (British journal of sports medicine), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.