International Journal of Medical Discoveries

Musculoskeletal disorders are the most common causes of disability across the globe and are also a significant contributor to pain, functional impairment, and the use of healthcare. Traditional physical therapy can be administered in several supervised sessions, but condensed physical therapy models with the focus on education and self-management, founded on exercise, have become a possible option. This meta-analysis and systematic review tried to prove the efficacy of single and multi-session exercise-oriented physical therapy cases in adults with musculoskeletal pain. Randomized controlled trials on the effects of condensed physical therapy interventions were identified by means of a systematic search of key electronic databases, such as PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library. Qualified studies comprised of adult participants with musculoskeletal pain who had to receive single-session or brief forms of exercise-based physical therapy versus the traditional multi-session physical therapy. The synthesis was done by meta-analysis based on standardized mean differences and 95 percent confidence intervals of quantitative outcomes. They included six randomized controlled trials (2,090 participants). The meta-analysis revealed that there were no clinically significant differences between condensed and multi-session exercise therapy on pain/functional outcome/ health-related quality of life at any point of follow-up. Multi-session interventions were found to have a small short-term gain in terms of pain reduction at six months, but were not long-term. In general, it seems that condensed exercise-based physical therapy interventions have similar clinical benefits to traditional multi-session therapy. These results indicate that simplified physical therapy models can provide an effective and affordable way of addressing musculoskeletal pain and maintaining sustainable healthcare provision.