You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Rehabilitation medicine
Protocol
Comparative study of treatment interventions for patellar tendinopathy: a protocol for a randomised controlled trial
  1. Maria Pilar López-Royo1,2,
  2. Eva Maria Gómez-Trullén3,
  3. Maria Ortiz-Lucas1,
  4. Rita Maria Galán-Díaz1,
  5. Ana Vanessa Bataller-Cervero1,
  6. Zaid Al-Boloushi1,2,4,
  7. Yasmina Hamam-Alcober1,
  8. Pablo Herrero1
  1. 1 iPhysio Research Group, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud. Universidad San Jorge, Villanueva de Gallego, Aragón, Spain
  2. 2 Departamento de Fisiatría y Enfermería, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Aragón, Spain
  3. 3 Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud y del Deporte, Universidad de Zaragoza, Campus de Huesca, Aragón, Spain
  4. 4 Kuwait Ministry of Health, Safat, Al Asimah, Kuwait
  1. Correspondence to Dr Pablo Herrero; pherrero{at}usj.es

Abstract

Introduction Patellar tendinopathy is a degenerative disease of the patellar tendon, which affects athletes from a variety of sports, and is especially predominant in sports involving high-impact jumping. The aim of this study is to determine the additional effect of two interventions combined with eccentric exercise and compare which one is the most effective at short-term and long-term follow-up for patients with patellar tendinopathy.

Methods and analysis This study is a randomised controlled trial with blinded participants. Measurements will be carried out by a specially trained blinded assessor. A sample of 57 patients with a medical diagnosis of patellar tendinopathy will participate in this study and will be divided into three treatment groups. Eligible participants will be randomly allocated to receive either: (a) treatment group with percutaneous needle electrolysis, (b) treatment group with dry needling or (c) treatment group with placebo needling. In addition, all groups will perform eccentric exercise. Functionality and muscle strength parameters, pain, ultrasound appearances and patient perceived quality of life shall be evaluated using the Victorian Institute of Sports Assessment for patellar (VISA-P), jump tests, Visual Analogue Scale, ultrasound images and Short Form-36 (SF-36), respectively. Participants will be assessed at baseline, at 10 weeks and at 22 weeks after baseline. The expected findings will allow us to advance in the treatment of this injury, as they will help determine whether a needling intervention has additional effects on an eccentric exercise programme and whether any of the needling modalities is more effective than the other.

Ethics and dissemination This protocol has been approved by the Ethics Committee of Aragon (N° PI15/0017). The trial will be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Trial registration number NCT02498795

  • eccentric exercise
  • tendinopathy
  • percutaneous needle electrolysis
  • dry needling
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-034304

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Twitter @DrPT_Zaid

    • Contributors MPL, EMG and PH conceived of the idea, and developed the intervention. MPL and PH wrote the article. MPL, MO, RMG, AVB, ZA, YH and PH developed the design of the trial. MO were involved in development of the statistical analysis of the trial and contributed to the content of the article. AVB contributed to the design and writing of the jump test protocol. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.