Background: Wrist and hand musculoskeletal conditions, including fractures, tendon injuries, and arthritis, significantly impact an individual's ability to perform daily tasks. Traditional physiotherapy, though effective, often faces challenges like patient non-compliance due to repetitive exercises and lengthy recovery periods. The review aims to identify the prevailing treatment approach for the management of individuals with musculoskeletal conditions of the wrist and hand. Objective: This review explores recent prevailing devices in physiotherapy treatment for wrist and hand musculoskeletal conditions. Methods: An extensive literature search was conducted among Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases. The keywords used for the search included "wrist rehabilitation," "hand musculoskeletal conditions," "virtual reality in physiotherapy," "robotic rehabilitation devices," "wearable technology in rehabilitation," "blood flow restriction therapy," "mirror neurons therapy," and "advanced physiotherapy techniques." Boolean operators (AND, OR) were used to refine the search results and ensure comprehensive coverage. The articles included were from the year 2019 to October 2025. Data from various studies were extracted and analyzed to understand how these innovations improve patient outcomes compared to conventional physiotherapy. Results: The review found that emerging approaches like virtual reality, robotic-assisted devices, and wearable devices offer engaging, personalized, and efficient rehabilitation solutions that improve patient adherence and accelerate recovery by providing an immersive virtual gaming scenario wherein the individuals actively participate and improve the functionality of the affected limb. However, the long-term efficacy and accessibility of these approaches still require further investigation. Conclusion: Advanced physiotherapy approaches like virtual reality have the potential to improve wrist and hand rehabilitation, offering better outcomes for patients. Active participation from the patient and motivation played an important role in regaining functionality. Integration of the prevailing rehabilitative approach will improve the adherence of the patient with the treatment, and better outcomes are achieved using virtual reality and Blood flow restriction therapy. Whereas other treatment approaches are proven to be effective, but to due high cost and continuous supervision sometimes make it less feasible as compared to the other treatment options.
Wadhokar et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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