Publications by authors named "Cosimo Costantino"

Urinary incontinence (UI) prevalence reaches the 80% rate in female athletes involved in high-impact sports. In this context, although conservative treatment represents the first therapeutic choice, there is still a lack of knowledge on the efficacy of conservative programs in young female athletes. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of pelvic floor rehabilitation in the treatment of UI in young nulliparous female athletes.

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: Stroke remains a major cause of disability and death, with survivors facing significant physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges. Rehabilitation is crucial for recovery, but outcomes can vary widely. Cognitive reserve (CR) has emerged as a factor influencing these outcomes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Hand tendinopathies are common conditions that can cause significant disability, and treatments vary widely, leading to confusion about the best methods, particularly for infiltrative therapies.
  • This systematic review focused on the effectiveness of injection techniques for treating pain associated with hand tendinopathies by analyzing recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published over the last decade.
  • Out of 641 articles examined, 23 RCTs were included in the review, confirming that infiltrative therapy significantly helps reduce pain and improve hand functionality in conditions like trigger finger and de Quervain's tenosynovitis.
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Injuries represent a serious concern for football players, with a significant loss in terms of sport participation and long periods of rehabilitation. According to the 2019/20 UEFA Élite Club Injury Report, the average incidence of injuries during training is 2.8 per 1000 h of training, with an average absence from training of 20 days.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A systematic review was conducted, screening 399 articles, but only 6 met the strict inclusion criteria focused on DNY and myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) in athletes.
  • * Initial findings indicate that DNY can significantly reduce pain and shoulder disability rapidly, although the optimal treatment frequency and intervals are still unclear.
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Introduction: Cerebral palsy (CP) is the predominant cause of children disability. It is characterized by motor, sensory, and postural deficits due to a non-progressive injury to the developing central nervous system. In recent years, new rehabilitation techniques targeting the central representations of motor patterns have been introduced: the most used are action observation therapy (AOT), motor imagery (MI), and mirror therapy (MT).

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Background: Surgical repair of distal biceps tendon injury restores flexion and supination strength, resulting in good functional outcome. There are few studies that consider clinical results of the operated arm compared to the healthy contralateral arm, whereas there are many articles examining the results of different surgical techniques. We carried out a systematic review with meta-analysis of the studies that consider this comparison.

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Stroke represents the third cause of long-term disability in the world. About 80% of stroke patients have an impairment of bio-motor functions and over half fail to regain arm functionality, resulting in motor movement control disorder with serious loss in terms of social independence. Therefore, rehabilitation plays a key role in the reduction of patient disabilities, and 3D printing (3DP) has showed interesting improvements in related fields, thanks to the possibility to produce customized, eco-sustainable and cost-effective orthoses.

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Background: Padel players commonly suffer from shoulder pain and the particularly high incidence is probably linked to the high frequency of strokes. In addition, due to the repetitive technical gesture, an adequate technique is essential in terms of performance and injury risk prevention. Aim of this study was to objectively evaluate shoulder kinematic during the athletic gesture to analyze the risk factors linked to padel strokes.

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Amputation has a big impact on the functioning of patients, with negative effects on locomotion and dexterity. In this context, inertial measurement units represent a useful tool in clinical practice for motion analysis, and in the development of personalized aids to improve a patient's function. To date, there is still a gap of knowledge in the scientific literature on the application of inertial sensors in amputee patients.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study explores the use of fully immersive virtual reality (FIVR) in stroke rehabilitation, highlighting its immersive experience that may enhance recovery.
  • Researchers analyzed 12 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving 350 stroke patients to assess FIVR's effectiveness compared to standard rehabilitation methods.
  • Results indicate that FIVR significantly improves upper limb dexterity, gait performance, and dynamic balance, ultimately promoting patient independence and quality of life for stroke survivors.
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Background And Aim: Physical activity is recognized as a major health determinant. However, the prevalence of inactivity can be as high as 80% in some adult subpopulations. From the urgent need to implement strategies to fight sedentary behaviour, considering that physical activity is defined as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that require energy expenditure, the pilot study "Activate your Wait" was born.

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Introduction: Action Observation Treatment (AOT) and Motor Imagery (MI) represent very promising cognitive strategies in neuro-rehabilitation. This study aims to compare the effectiveness of the two cognitive strategies, taken alone or combined, in Parkinson's disease patients.

Material And Methods: This study is designed as a prospective randomized controlled trial, with four arms.

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Background: Chest Computed Tomography (CT) imaging has played a central role in the diagnosis of interstitial pneumonia in patients affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and can be used to obtain the extent of lung involvement in COVID-19 pneumonia patients either qualitatively, via visual inspection, or quantitatively, via AI-based software. This study aims to compare the qualitative/quantitative pathological lung extension data on COVID-19 patients. Secondly, the quantitative data obtained were compared to verify their concordance since they were derived from three different lung segmentation software.

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Introduction: Adhesive capsulitis is a disease of unknown etiology. Conservative therapy is based on the use of multimodal techniques (instrumental physical therapy, exercise, physiokinesitherapy and anti-inflammatory drug therapy). Yet, there is no consensus on which conservative therapy treatment is best for the management of the patient with adhesive capsulitis.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Tendinopathies are common and can cause significant pain and disability for both the general population and athletes, making conservative treatment, like eccentric exercises, the preferred option.
  • - Treatment with these exercises can be time-consuming and may lead to discouragement, prompting research into injection therapies to speed up recovery alongside standard treatments.
  • - This review focuses on the effectiveness of low molecular weight hyaluronic acid (LMW-HA) in treating tendinopathies, highlighting its potential benefits based on both preclinical and clinical research, and encouraging more studies in this area.
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  • Home monitoring enhances therapy by providing continuous data to healthcare professionals, especially crucial for conditions like neonatal apnea occurring post-hospital discharge.
  • The study introduced a mechatronic platform that simulates realistic newborn movements using data from accelerometers and infrared sensors, which helps in accurately detecting apnea events.
  • A smart software and customizable mobile app were developed to streamline data management and interpretation, allowing for effective alert classification and information sharing without needing specialized training.
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The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a severe ongoing global emergency. Despite high rates of asymptomatic patients, in many cases, the infection causes a rapid decline in pulmonary function due to an acute respiratory distress-like syndrome, leading to multi-organ failure and death. To date, recommendations about rehabilitation on COVID-19 are based on clinical data derived from other similar lung diseases.

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Gait and jump anomalies are often used as indicators to identify the presence and state of disorders that involve motor symptoms. Physical tests are often performed in specialized laboratories, which offer reliable and accurate results, but require long and costly analyses performed by specialized personnel. The use of inertial sensors for gait and jump evaluation offers an easy-to-use low-cost alternative, potentially applicable by the patients themselves at home.

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Background And Aim: To determine the efficacy of the synergistic use of High Power Laser Therapy (HPLT) with glucosamine sulfate (GS) in knee osteoarthritis.

Methods: This 2-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT) enrolled 90 subjects (M=53, F=37, y= 55±11.2) and randomly allocated using a stratified sampling method in experimental group (A) with HPLT+GS 1500mg (GS - Dona®, Rottapharm, Monza, Italy) (n=45) or in a control group (B) with HPLT + placebo (n=45).

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Haemophilia A is a rare inherited hematologic disorder characterized by a deficit of coagulation factor VIII. It is associated with frequent episodes of musculoskeletal bleedings that occur mainly inside joints and secondly inside muscles. The majority of intramuscular hematomas respond well to conservative protocols, based on rehabilitation techniques and appropriate haemostatic coverage; surgery is limited to refractory cases.

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(1) Background: Management of chronic low back pain (cLBP) is often multidisciplinary, involving a combination of treatments, including therapeutic exercises. Core stability exercises aim to improve pain and disability in cLBP increasing spinal stability, neuromuscular control, and preventing shear force that causes injury to the lumbar spine. The purpose of this study was to review the available evidence about the effectiveness in reducing pain and improving disability of core stability exercises for non-specific cLBP.

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Objectives: To conduct a systematic review of randomized controlled trials about the safety (number and severity of adverse events) and efficacy (pain reduction and functional improvement) of mesotherapy in musculoskeletal disorders, and to compare them with other therapeutic options, in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement.

Methods: A search of PubMed, Cochrane Library and Scopus database resulted in an initial total of 16,253 records. A total of 931 articles were included in the study.

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Background And Aim: In Multiple Sclerosis (MS) spasticity worsen patient's quality of life. Botulinum NeuroToxin TypeA (BoNT-A) is extensively used in focal spasticity, frequently combined with physical therapies. Radial extracorporeal shock waves (rESW) were already used in association with BoNT-A.

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The production of 3D printed safety protection devices (SPD) requires particular attention to the material selection and to the evaluation of mechanical resistance, biological safety and surface roughness related to the accumulation of bacteria and viruses. We explored the possibility to adopt additive manufacturing technologies for the production of respirator masks, responding to the sudden demand of SPDs caused by the emergency scenario of the pandemic spread of SARS-COV-2. In this study, we developed different prototypes of masks, exclusively applying basic additive manufacturing technologies like fused deposition modeling (FDM) and droplet-based precision extrusion deposition (db-PED) to common food packaging materials.

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