Myofascial pain syndromes — the great mimicker
One article on PainSci cites Flax 1995: The Complete Guide to Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
Five myofascial pain syndromes, some mimicking more serious diseases, have been presented. They were diagnosed as and treated for: headache, shoulder bursitis, lumbar herniated disc with radiculopathy, angina pectoris and appendicitis. An understanding of these pain problems, produced from trigger points in muscles and ligaments, is important in order to differentiate myofascial pain syndromes from more dangerous diseases and to avoid unnecessary and expensive diagnostic procedures.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Inciting events associated with lumbar disc herniation. Suri 2010 Spine J.
- Prediction of an extruded fragment in lumbar disc patients from clinical presentations. Pople 1994 Spine (Phila Pa 1976).
- Characteristics of patients with low back and leg pain seeking treatment in primary care: baseline results from the ATLAS cohort study. Konstantinou 2015 BMC Musculoskelet Disord.
- Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial. Kuyken 2022 Evid Based Ment Health.
- Is there a relationship between throbbing pain and arterial pulsations? Mirza 2012 J Neurosci.