Reference

Level of evidence

Study type

No. of patients

Inclusion criteria

Intervention

control

Follow-up

Outcomes

Results

Remarks

Dehghan et al. [6]

3

RCT

57

Frozen shoulder and diabetes mellitus

NSAID while the latter group were undergone intra-articular corticosteroid injection

24 weeks

Both intra-articular corticosteroid and NSAID are effective in treatment of adhesive capsulitis and there is no significant difference between efficacies of these two treatment modalities in diabetic patients

Arroll and Goodyear-Smith [1]

Meta-analysis

7 RCTs

Shoulder pain

Corticosteroids vs. placebo and three for corticosteroids vs. nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs

Subacromial injections of corticosteroids are effective for improvement for rotator cuff tendonitis up to a 9-month period. They are also probably more effective than NSAID medication. Higher doses may be better than lower doses for subacromial corticosteroid injection for rotator cuff. tendonitis

Buchbinder et al. [5]

1

Cochrane review

13 RCTs

Intra-articular injection for adhesive capsulitis may be beneficial although their effect may be small and not well-maintained

Buchbinder et al. [4]

1

Cochrane review

5 trials180

There is “Silver” level evidence that oral steroids provides significant short-term benefits in pain, range of movement of the shoulder and function in adhesive capsulitis but the effect may not be maintained beyond 6 weeks

Favejee et al. [8]

1

Systematic review

5 cohrane reviews and 18 RCT’s

The study included patients with frozen shoulder; (2) the disorder was not caused by an acute trauma or systemic disease; (3) an intervention for treating frozen shoulder was evaluated; (4) results on pain, function or recovery were reported

Strong evidence for the effectiveness of steroid injections

Most of the included studies reported short-term results, whereas symptoms of frozen shoulder may last up to 4 years

Soh et al. [15]

2

Meta-analysis

2 RCTs

Image-guided (ultrasound) injections had statistically significant greater improvement in shoulder pain and function at 6 weeks after injection. Image-guided (ultrasound) corticosteroid injections potentially offer a significantly greater clinical improvement over blind (landmark-guided) injections in adults with shoulder pain