Umbrella Review of Systematic Reviews on Shock Wave Therapy for Post-Stroke Spasticity

An umbrella review synthesizing 17 systematic reviews and meta-analyses on extracorporeal shock wave therapy for post-stroke spasticity, published up to May 2025. The review, authored by Jiayi Chang and released in April 2026, assessed methodological quality and evidence certainty, finding that included reviews generally suggest the therapy improves spasticity, sensorimotor function, range of motion, and pain.

Use Cases

• Evidence mapping for clinical guideline development based on the synthesis of 17 systematic reviews.
• Assessing methodological quality and evidence certainty in medical literature based on AMSTAR 2 and GRADE evaluations.
• Identifying research gaps for future high-quality studies based on the noted limitations in evidence generalizability and quality.

Strengths

• Synthesizes findings from 17 distinct systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
• Includes formal quality assessments using the AMSTAR 2 tool and evidence certainty ratings using the GRADE approach.
• Registered as a systematic review (CRD420251124065), indicating a predefined protocol.

Limitations

• The underlying data is a 63.5 KB DOCX file containing the review document, not a structured dataset of primary study results.
• The review notes the generally low methodological quality of the included systematic reviews, limiting the conclusiveness of the evidence.
• Language restrictions and a predominance of studies from a single country may limit the generalizability of the synthesized findings.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Comprehensive search of eight databases conducted by two independent scholars, with data extraction and quality appraisal performed according to the described protocol.

Time Range

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses published up to May 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-20 04:11:59.

Geography

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