A randomized clinical trial comparing pulsed ultrasound and erythromycin
phonophoresis in the treatment of patients with chronic rhinosinusitis.
Author(s): Ansari NN(1), Naghdi S, Fathali M, Bartley J, Rastak MS.
Affiliation(s): Author information:
(1)Department of Physiotherapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of
Medical Sciences , Tehran , Iran and.
Publication date & source: 2015, Physiother Theory Pract. , 31(3):166-72
Therapeutic ultrasound, an important physiotherapy modality, has been used
successfully in the treatment of patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). No
study has compared pulsed ultrasound (PUS) with erythromycin phonophoresis (EP).
The aim of this randomized, double-blind, parallel group study with concealed
allocation was to compare PUS with EP. Sixty CRS patients were randomly allocated
into two groups. Group 1 had PUS and Group 2 had EP. Patients were treated 3 days
a week for 10 sessions over 4 weeks. The severity of nine CRS symptoms was
self-rated by patients on an ordinal scale of 0-3 (absent, mild, moderate or
severe) at baseline and after the 10th treatment session. Individual symptom
scores were summed to obtain a "Total Symptom Score" (TSS). The outcome measure
included percentage improvement in the TSS. A statistically significant
improvement in TSS occurred with both PUS and EP therapy groups (p < 0.05). The
percentage improvement in the EP group was statistically greater than in the PUS
group (67.2 versus 49.3%) (p = 0.03). The effect sizes in both therapy groups
were large; PUS: d = 1.36 and EP: d = 2.15. EP was found to be superior over PUS
therapy.
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