Ultrasound, as a monotherapy may not have a substantial effect on functional improvement in patients having joint pain. But it can be a valuable adjunct to consider with other common modalities for managing chronic pain in joints.

A systematic review was carried out to investigate the efficacy of low frequency and pulsed ultrasound as a monotherapy in the treatment of patients having chronic knee, shoulder, and hip pain.

The PubMed, Web of Science, CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library), and Scopus databases were extensively searched utilizing Preferred Reporting in Systematic and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to identify randomized controlled trials that assessed therapeutic ultrasound (continuous and pulsed) in patients suffering from osteoarthritis joint pain.

The search detected seven trials for shoulder, eight trials for knee, and 0 trials for hip that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. All the eight clinical trials depicted alleviation in knee pain, and three studies depicted remarkable improvement for an ultrasound when compared to the comparator modality. For shoulder pain, all the seven trials depicted a decline in pain. However, four studies indicated the inferiority of ultrasound when compared to the comparator modality.

Ultrasound is a safer modality for improving knee, hip, and shoulder osteoarthritic pain and is commonly combined with other physiotherapeutics. The knee arthritis literature is highly robust, with few evidence favoring ultrasound, though the delivery mode of ultrasound (pulsed versus continuous) appears to be highly controversial.

Therapeutic ultrasound appears to be commonly utilized for alleviating knee, hip, and shoulder osteoarthritic pain and is often combined with additional physiotherapeutic modalities.