Key message

The Knowledge Centre in the Norwegian Institute of Public Health was asked by physiotherapist Irene Krystad at the Department for Physiotherapy at Tysvær municipality, to find research on the effects of stretching after treatment with botulinum toxin for adult patients with spasticity. After having searched for literature, they had found limited documentation and saw the need of mapping existing research on this subject in a systematic way.

We conducted a systematic mapping review by searching for systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials om the effect of stretching after treatment with botulinum toxin versus treatment with botulinum toxin alone on adults with spasticity.

The search for systematic reviews resulted in 1109 references. We included four of these systematic reviews. The reviews included five randomised controlled trials with a total of 119 patients that were relevant to our research question.

The search for randomised controlled trials resulted in 2617 references. Of these we included five trials with a total of 138 patients. Four of these trials were included in the systematic review. We chose not to include the fifth trial that was included in the reviews, because we considered the intervention used not to achieve a mechanism of stretching

We identified gaps in the existing literature on research on the effect of stretching after treatment with botulinum toxin versus botulinum toxin alone.