Comparison of combined isotonic and deep friction soft tissue techniques on pain and function in patients with chronic lateral epicondylitis

Abstract

To determine the effects of combined isotonic and deep friction soft tissue techniques on pain and function in patient with chronic lateral epicondylitis. Study Design: Quasi Experimental study. Place and Duration of study: Data was collected from Mednic clinic and services hospital Lahore, for 6 months of duration after the approval of synopsis. Method: Quasi Experimental study was conducted on twenty-two patients of chronic lateral epicondylitis. Participants were allocated to either combined isotonic technique group and deep friction soft tissue technique group, both groups were treated for 12 sessions in 4 weeks. NPRS and PRTEE scale were used to measure the treatment effect before and after treatment of 3 session per week, total 12 sessions in 4 weeks to each participant. Data was analyzed by SPSS 21. Results: Total participants 22 were classified into two groups, Group A (combined isotonic technique) and Group B (deep friction soft tissue technique group). Minimum age was 30, maximum age was 46, mean age 37 and standard deviation was ±4.93. The significance was greater than 0.05 which mean the data is normally distributed as the value of Shapiro wilk test for NPRS .88 and for PTREE was .208, therefore parametric test (paired and independent T test) was applied. The significance values for all statistical tests were set to 0.05. Paired sample T test for NPRS mean difference reading for group A was 2.63 ±.9244 and group B was 1.09 ±.3015 and for PRTEE mean difference for group A was 14.09 ±7.8288 and group B was 5.81 ±3.945 showed that although in both group changes were significant but difference of mean was greater in Combined isotonic technique group. Independent T test comparison of mean score of NPRS and PRTEE between Group A and Group B showed that there was significant difference in value, pretreatment NPRS mean difference was .011 and post treatment NPRS score was 1.54. pretreatment PRTEE mean difference was 1.90 and post treatment NPRS score was 6.36 so combined isotonic technique showed greater mean difference after treatment. Conclusion: The study concluded that combined isotonic exercises group showed better results than deep friction soft tissue technique group for improvement of pain and functional disability in lateral epicondylitis patients