## 3 Results
### Key Findings
#### 3.3.3 Non Specified Achilles Tendinopathy
Thus, the implementation of a night splint or brace did not have any influence on pain decrease, function improvement, or quality of life improvement [36; 46; 61]. However, there were some contradictory data about the efficiency of the implementation of a brace to the ECC exercise protocol [46; 57]. Whereas [PERSON] and [PERSON] [46] reported that the brace did not have beneficial effects for function improvement, quality of life improvement, or pain decrease, [PERSON] et al. [57] reported that at a 1-year follow-up, AirHeel brace treatment was found to be as successful as ECC exercise in terms of pain decrease and function improvement for treating MAT (with a reported improvement of 10%). The data about the efficacy of orthoses were also contradictory. While [PERSON] et al. [71] claimed that orthoses did not improve function or decrease pain in MAT and were found to be as useful as a placebo or the wait-and-see treatment, [PERSON] et al. [57] reported that customized foot orthoses had similar effects on the pain decrease and function improvement of AT as physiotherapy (with SMD of \(-0.04\)) [57]. However, they also reported that much better effects compared to each intervention alone were observed when the therapist combined both foot orthoses and physiotherapy. Hence, using Kinesio tape did not influence the jumping performance of patients with AT [65]. These patients did not achieve as long jumping distances as healthy individuals did [65]. Meanwhile, no significant difference was found either in pain decrease (VAS) scores by the application of Kinesio tape or during the hop test without and with tape (\(p=0.74\)) [57; 65], but it improved function, especially for patients with AT, which was observed in a study that included badminton players [57]. Conversely, the combination of foot orthoses with taping was found to be effective even for decreasing the pain of football players compared to the baseline [57]. Meanwhile, combining either deep friction massage, ultrasound, and calf stretching [59] or manual therapy alone with HECT [46] caused a beneficial improvement in function and a decrease in pain compared to any included protocol as monotherapy [46; 59]. Meanwhile, a lot of authors [28; 36; 59; 61] reported that a combination of ESWT and ECC exercise caused a greater pain decrease and function improvement than any one alone. However, the combination of cold air and high-energy laser therapy with ECC exercise caused an even faster and greater pain decrease and function improvement than ESWT with ECC exercise did [36]. On the other hand, the implementation of low-level laser therapy to ECC exercise accelerated clinical recovery (function improvement and pain decrease) for patients with AT [36]. [PERSON] et al. [69] observed the mean difference of pain decrease on a 10-point VAS scale between ECC exercise with low-level laser therapy and ECC exercise with sham low-level laser therapy, at more time points. Only at a 2-month follow-up was the MD 2.55 points in favour of the combined ECC exercise and low-level laser therapy treatment, while in all other cases (at 1- and 3-month follow-ups), the mean differences between the same protocols were lower than or equal to 0.61 points on the 10-point VAS scale in favour of ECC exercise with low-level laser therapy [69]. Similarly, a greater improvement in function was observed after executing combined ECC exercise with low-level laser therapy protocol compared to ECC exercise with sham low-level laser therapy protocol at a 1-month follow-up (with an MD of 9.19 points on a 100-point scale) and a 3-month follow-up (with an MD of 3.39 points on a 100-point scale) [69]. In comparison to all other implemented therapies with the ECC exercise protocol, the implementation of microcurrent therapy did not cause any additional improvement in function or decrease in pain at 12-, 26-, and 52-week follow-ups [59].