STUDY DESIGN Cochrane systematic review. OBJECTIVE To assess the effects of superficial heat and cold therapy for low back pain in adults. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Heat and cold are commonly used in the treatment of low back pain. METHODS We searched electronic databases from inception to October 2005. Two authors independently assessed inclusion, methodologic quality, and extracted dat...

Background/objective Cold water immersion (CWI) and active recovery treatment (ACT) are commonly used recovery treatments for athletes between exercise bouts, but they are sometimes limited by space and availability of equipment in training and competition venues. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine whether cold compression therapy (CCT) would provide the same effect as CWI an...

On the basis of published research, the authors present the current state of our knowledge about local and whole-body low temperature therapy in patients with musculoskeletal disorders and related diseases. The results of experimental studies of cryostimmulation in sports medicine are emphasized. We found that the scientific value of many publications concerning the effectiveness of cryotherapy...

BACKGROUND Cryotherapy is often used to treat cervical precancer in developing countries. There are different methods and cryogen gases used for cryotherapy, including the freeze-flush-freeze (cough) technique employed to minimize gas blockage. However, there is limited information to compare their effectiveness. METHODS Using a tissue model, we compared temperature-time curves for four cryot...

Cryotherapy refers to the use of cold temperature to treat disease and is a mainstay therapeutic modality for a wide variety of skin conditions. This article reviews the early history of development of cryotherapy in dermatology.

Proprioception plays an important role in the complex mechanism of joint control. Contemporary sport activities impose extremely high physical demands on athletes. Winter sports are played in areas with excessively low temperatures. Moreover, many athletes are subjected to treatments that involve local lowering of the body temperature before, during, and after physical activity. This work revie...

Contemporary cryogenics has been developing from the end of the 19th century since the liquefaction of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and also the industrial production and storage of liquid coolants, enabled the development of cryobiology and the use of extremely low temperatures in medicine. The term "cryotherapy" was first used in 1908 by A.W. Pusey to describe the treatment ...