A review of pain management and functional improvement in stage II Adhesive Capsulitis

This review was done to analyze the literature, investigating the effects of physiotherapy and rehabilitative interventions in patients suffering from stage II adhesive capsulitis on their pain management and functional improvement. Adhesive capsulitis is a painful condition characterized by progressive loss of function at shoulder joint due to restricted active and passive ranges. Till today, no unanimity has been established regarding its rehabilitative treatment for pain management and functional improvement. Methods: A review of the literature available from 2010 until 2022 was carried out using the various research databases such as Medline, PEDro, PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews. A combination of terms was used for the search: adhesive capsulitis OR frozen shoulder AND systematic review OR meta-analysis AND pain management OR functional recovery OR functional improvement. We included systematic reviews that specifically dealt with stage II adhesive capsulitis, treated with physiotherapy. Qualitative analysis was used. Results: Out of 33 studies, only 15 systematic reviews respected the eligibility criteria and were included in this study. Their results showed an important heterogeneity of the studies and all of them agree on the lack of high-quality scientific work to prove unequivocally which rehabilitative treatment is better than the other. It was also found that due to this lack of gold standard criteria, there is also heterogeneity in the diagnosis of the same.

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