A NEAR-INFRARED LED-BASED REHABILITATION SYSTEM: INITIAL CLINICAL EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Treatment of sports injuries in top class athletes should be as fast and effective as possible, to enable the athlete to return to training or competition as quickly as possible so as to maintain as much of their preinjury muscle tone as they can. Laser therapy has offered an effective modality, particularly with deep-penetrating wavelengths in the near infrared around 830 nm, but the treatment of a major muscle injury requires multiple point applications of a hand-held unit, and is very therapist intensive. A new hands-free operation system based on multipanels of near IR light-emitting diodes (LEDs, 830 nm, 180 mW/cm2) has been developed designed for applications in rehabilitation and physical therapy. The present study was designed to test the efficacy of this IR LED rehabilitation system (Omnilux Rehabilitation System, Photo Therapeutics, Ltd., Altrincham, UK) in a variety of sports injuries, both acute and chronic. Twenty-eight subjects were enrolled in the study with a variety of conditions: Joint Pain and Dysfunction (n=8), Tendinopathies (n=7), Muscle Pain and Dysfunction (n=4), and Back Pain (n=9). In 17 of the 28 subjects the results were excellent, and varied in the others. However, prudent doses of 54 and 108 J/cm2 (5 and 10 min exposure times, respectively) were chosen. Higher doses may give better effects. Both acute and chronic pain types responded well to IR LED therapy. There were no adverse side effects, and all subjects were happy with the treatment. Practitioners were also pleased with the ease of use of the system, and found it safe and effective. Further controlled, double blind studies are required with larger populations and a greater range of pain entities to further examine efficacy with statistical analysis, but the results of the present efficacy study are very promising.