Dataset related to: "Are Extracorporeal Shock Waves Just a Therapeutic Tool?"

We provide the raw data used for the following article:

Gialanella B, Comini L, Bonometti GP, Vanoglio F, Bettinsoli A, Santoro R, Olivares A, Luisa A. Are Extracorporeal Shock Waves Just a Therapeutic Tool? Diagnostics 2024, 14, 2440. https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics14212440. 

Abstract: Background: Focused extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) has been successfully
used to treat musculoskeletal conditions, but ESWT stimulates nociceptors, causing pain deep in
the tissue during treatment. The occurrence of pain during ESWT is a side effect, but it can help
identify painful sites and assess minimum (MiTI) and maximum (MaTI) pain thresholds to ESWT
pressure stimuli. This topic has received limited attention in literature. Methods: This observational
study describes a specific approach to using ESWT to study pain in 71 patients. The approach
proposes moving the ESWT transducer head of the device over the entire joint surface, progressively
increasing the energy level until the patient experiences pain. Results: In the study, MiTI and
MaTI were 0.218 ± 0.090 and 0.416 ± 0.165 mJ/mm2 in the affected joint and 0.282 ± 0.128 and
0.501 ± 0.174 mJ/mm2 in the contralateral homologous healthy joint, being significantly lower in the
affected joint (MiTI: p < 0.001 and MaTI: p = 0.003, respectively). ESWT induced pain in 94.37% of
the sites with the highest subjective pain and in a greater number of sites (204) than digital pressure
(123) (p < 0.001). All sites with digital pressure pain also had ESWT pain. Conclusions: These results
suggest that the ESWT device may be useful in investigating pain in musculoskeletal conditions and
tailoring therapy.