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 successfullyused to treat musculoskeletal conditions, but ESWT stimulates nociceptors, causing pain deep inthe tissue during treatment. The occurrence of pain during ESWT is a side effect, but it can helpidentify painful sites and assess minimum (MiTI) and maximum (MaTI) pain thresholds to ESWTpressure stimuli. This topic has received limited attention in literature. Methods: This observationalstudy describes a specific approach to using ESWT to study pain in 71 patients. The approachproposes moving the ESWT transducer head of the device over the entire joint surface, progressivelyincreasing the energy level until the patient experiences pain. Results: In the study, MiTI andMaTI were 0.218 ± 0.090 and 0.416 ± 0.165 mJ/mm2 in the affected joint and 0.282 ± 0.128 and0.501 ± 0.174 mJ/mm2 in the contralateral homologous healthy joint, being significantly lower in theaffected joint (MiTI: p < 0.001 and MaTI: p = 0.003, respectively). ESWT induced pain in 94.37% ofthe 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 resultssuggest that the ESWT device may be useful in investigating pain in musculoskeletal conditions andtailoring therapy.