A bright future for extracorporeal shock wave therapy for musculosceletal pathologies in China

It was in 2009 when I visited China for the first time and gave lectures about extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) for tendon and other pathologies of the musculoskeletal system.Since then I have visited China more than 15 times,travelled all across the country (from Changchun in the north over Kunming in the west and Shanghai in the east to Guangzhou in the south),and established an excellent network of scientific collaborations on this exciting topic.

I remember the day when Prof.Jianan Lee and I decided after an ISPRM-DC workshop on ESWT in Nanjing that users of this technology in China could greatly benefit from a new book on this topic.I had written a template,but it became clear very soon that it would require a substantial modification in order to be usable in China.

It is the great merit of Prof.Jianan Lee,Prof.Guangxu Xu and their excellent team (above all Dr.Hongxing Wang,Dr.Ying Shen and all the deputy editors in chief) that the book is ready and available now;this is truly an outstanding achievement.Actually the book covers all aspects of modern ESWT and particularly emphasizes the fact that nowadays,approximately80 to 90 percent of all ESWT treatments in China are performed using radial ESWT (rESWT).This development would not have been possible without tireless efforts by many colleagues in China and worldwide to demonstrate efficacy and safety of rESWT for many musculoskeletal disorders in the academic literature.I am grateful to be able to be part of these developments,with many very fruitful scientific collaborations in China,which have also laid the basis for many friendships between colleagues in China and Europe,the USA and the rest of the world.Even the Covid-19 pandemic could not stop these developments.

I wish the new book the wide distribution in China it deserves,for the benefit of many,many patients in China.The future of ESWT in China starts now.

Dr.Christoph Schmitz,MD

Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy II

Author of approximately 40 publications on ESWT in the international peer-reviewed literature

Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich

Munich

Germany

06 September 2021