Laser therapy in the treatment of chronic multi-site pain: a systematic review

Abstract

Laser therapies are noninvasive techniques with painless, safe, and low-cost therapeutic procedures for chronic pain. No systematic review has evaluated the effects of laser in the treatment of multi-site chronic pain. Objective: To evaluate the effects of laser in the treatment of generalized multi-site chronic pain. Methods: This pioneering study presents a PRISMA systematic review protocol designed to up-to-date the current literature on Laser Therapy in patients with chronic multi-site pain from all founded etiologies. This protocol was registered on the PROSPERO website before data extraction (registration no. CRD42019152345). Results: About 1391 articles met the inclusion criteria and 15 studies were selected for the data extraction. We found 12 studies in patients with fibromyalgia, 01 study about myofascial pain syndrome, 01 study about rheumatoid arthritis and 01 study about diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy. Homogeneity was not found in the Laser protocols, clinical conditions studied, the evaluation methods, or in the controlled groups but together studies suggested that Laser could have benefits in the treatment of pain severity, quality of life, fatigue, stiffness, depression, and anxiety compared to placebo and other therapies for fibromyalgia and for pain at Rheumatoid Arthritis and Diabetic Polyneuropathy. Conclusion: Laser therapy plus the standardized exercise or amitriptilyne provided no extra advantage in the relief of symptoms at fibromyalgia. For TMD myofascial pain no benefits were founded. Studies showed numerous different points and locations of light application but none of the selected studies used spinal stimulation as the Laser application site.