ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To assess the efficiency of a treatment composed of muscle stretching exercises, associated or not to laser therapy at tender points, for patients with fibromyalgia (FM), in view of bettering their quality of life. METHODS: Twenty FM patients were randomly assigned to two groups: one submitted to laser therapy and stretching (LSG, n=10), and the other only to stretching exercises (SG, n=10). The visual analog scale of pain (VAS) and dolorimetry at tender points were used to assess pain; life quality was evaluated by means of the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ) and the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36). RESULTS: After the treatment program, both in LSG and SG were detected pain reduction, higher pain threshold at tender points (all p<0.01), lower mean FIQ scores, and higher SF-36 mean scores (all p<0.05). No significant differences were found between both groups. CONCLUSION: The stretching exercises program proposed is efficient to reduce pain and painful sensibility at tender points, thus enhancing patients' quality of life. Laser therapy has not shown advantages when added to muscle stretching exercises.
Subject(s)
Fibromyalgia/radiotherapy , Low-Level Light Therapy , Muscle Stretching Exercises/methods , Pain/radiotherapy , Adult , Female , Fibromyalgia/physiopathology , Health Surveys , Humans , Middle Aged , Muscle, Skeletal/radiation effects , Pain/physiopathology , Pain Measurement , Quality of LifeABSTRACT
The most typical symptom of fibromyalgia (FM) is diffuse pain, and pain at specific points-tender points-is crucial for its diagnosis. By comparing healthy individuals and FM patients, this study was aimed at assessing pain and quality of life of Brazilian females with FM, while seeking for a correlation between pain threshold and quality of life. A total of 178 women were evaluated: 124 were FM patients and 54 were healthy women. Pain threshold at tender points was quantified by dolorimetry, and diffuse pain by means of the visual analogue scale (VAS); the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ) was used to evaluate quality of life. Statistical treatment of the data allowed for proposing two indexes: a pain threshold index (PT) and a quality of life one (QOL). PT is the lowest value among all pain thresholds measured at the 18 tender points; QOL is the mean of responses to the FIQ and VAS. Both indexes were tested and showed significant differences between the test and control groups. By pairing pain threshold values of each tender point in the test and control groups, it was found that the most sensitive points matched between the two groups, that is, the most sensitive anatomic spots in a healthy individual are also likely to be the most sensitive points in a person with FM. This suggests that a stimulus that provokes slight discomfort to a healthy person may produce more pain in FM patients--which may bear implications for FM clinical treatment. In this sample of Brazilian women, FM patients had both lower pain threshold and worse quality of life than healthy women.
Subject(s)
Fibromyalgia , Pain Measurement , Pain Threshold/physiology , Quality of Life , Adult , Female , Fibromyalgia/diagnosis , Fibromyalgia/psychology , Humans , Middle Aged , Sensitivity and Specificity , Severity of Illness IndexABSTRACT
Fibromialgia (FM) é uma síndrome reumática caracterizada por dor musculoesquelética cr6onica e difusa assim como baixo limiar de dor em pontos anatômicos específicos chamados tender points
