A Cochrane review included 3 studies with a total of 94 subjects. All the trials compared the use of electromagnetic therapy (EMT) with sham-EMT. Two studies reported healing rates; one study (n=44) reported that significantly more ulcers healed in the EMT group than the sham-EMT group at 90 days (67% in the EMT group vs. 32% in the sham group; RR 2.11, 95% CI 1.01 to 4.42). However this result was not robust to different assumptions about the outcomes of participants who were lost to follow up. The second trial (n=19) found no significant difference in the number of ulcers healed at day 50 (20% in the EMT group vs. 22% in the sham-EMT group; RR 0.90, 95% CI 0.16 to 5.13). The third trial (n=31) reported significantly greater reductions in ulcer size in the EMT group (P < 0.0002). However this result may have been influenced by differences in the prognostic profiles of the treatment groups (ulcers in the sham group were of longer duration).
Comment: The quality of evidence is downgraded by study quality (unclear allocation concealment), by inconsistency (variability in results across studies), and by imprecise results (few patients and wide confidence intervals).