Mesotherapy in the treatment of musculoskeletal pain in rehabilitation: the state of the art.

Abstract

BackgroundMesotherapy can be included as an ancillary treatment in the management of localized pain in rehabilitation, but there are no definitive treatment protocols for this approach.ObjectivesThe purpose of this review was to examine new indications for more standard protocols of mesotherapy in rehabilitation.Materials and methodsThis systematic review was performed using the following resources: PubMed, Cochrane, PEDro, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The following algorithm was developed, based on the PICO acronym, to evaluate the effects of mesotherapy, with pain as the primary outcome (MESH terms): [mesotherapy AND pain], [mesotherapy AND musculoskeletal], [mesotherapy AND musculoskeletal disorder], [intradermal therapy AND pain], and [intradermal therapy AND musculoskeletal disorder].ResultsSeven articles (N=7) satisfied the inclusion criteria and were considered in the review: two of them treated osteoarthritis of the knee (3 sessions) and pes anserine (9 sessions) emphasizing a good efficacy of mesotherapy. Five studies analyzed spine diseases (specifically, two was about chronic and nonspecific neck pain, two about acute low back pain and one about chronic spinal pain): the results of mesotherapy treatment are encouraging both for the resolution of acute and chronic musculoskeletal vertebral pain from one to five sessions.ConclusionMesotherapy showed a good effect to reduce acute and chronic musculoskeletal pain and, also, it is a well-tolerated treatment. Nonetheless future randomized controlled trials should be desirable for more uniform treatment protocols.