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The effects from this therapy are due to low irradiation intensities and are not due to any effect of heating up tissues.
As the last few decades has progressed, a substantial amount of research has been conducted displaying laser treatment for musculoskeletal conditions to be safe, effective, and non-invasive.
Studies in animals have shown that laser treatment can promote recovery after acute trauma and lessen edema along with increasing tissue strength of healing wounds.
Healing rates of injured tendons in animals have shown significant improvement as well.
One interesting finding was that wounds that were treated with laser showed increased tensile strength, and wounds on the contralateral side not treated with laser showed an increase as well.
This was deemed to be due to a systemic effect of having the laser treatment with some sort of tissue growth factor being increased in the circulation.
More research needs to be done in this area to delineate exactly which factor is increased.
In human studies along with animals, laser treatment has been shown to facilitate collagen production which enhances tendon healing.
Laser irradiation on a daily basis has been shown to decrease wound inflammation by 20-30%.
This occurs partly by decreasing the amount of prostaglandins in the region, which are components of inflammation.
Low energy photon laser therapy has shown utility for heel spurs, rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, and shoulder tendonitis.
One of the proven mechanisms involved concerns the improvement of local microcirculation, which promotes wound healing.
In animals, this may explain why bone fractures treated with laser healed faster than in the control group.
Small scale human studies of patients with osteoarthritis in either the knee or spine displayed over a 90% excellent pain relief with low level laser therapy.
Studies in patients with rheumatoid arthritis receiving laser treatment have showed that 2/3 of patients benefit, which potentially gives it significant advantages over NSAIDS and steroid injections.
For low back pain, low level laser therapy has shown excellent results for pain emanating from a number of sources with minimal side effects.
Compared to control group, laser was twice as effective and also relapsed only half as much.
Used in conjunction with chiropractic care, lasers may provide excellent results for a broad range of painful conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, tendonitis, and even post-surgical scarring problem areas.
Compared with surgical intervention, laser treatment is low cost, outpatient, and does not promote scarring.
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