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:
- Relationships Between Sleep Quality and Pain-Related Factors for People with Chronic Low Back Pain: Tests of Reciprocal and Time of Day Effects. Gerhart 2017 Ann Behav Med.
- Modulation in the elastic properties of gastrocnemius muscle heads in individuals with plantar fasciitis and its relationship with pain. Zhou 2020 Sci Rep.
- Association Between Plantar Fasciitis and Isolated Gastrocnemius Tightness. Nakale 2018 Foot Ankle Int.
- No Added Benefit of Combining Dry Needling With Guideline-Based Physical Therapy When Managing Chronic Neck Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Stieven 2020 J Orthop Sports Phys Ther.
- Effectiveness of customised foot orthoses for Achilles tendinopathy: a randomised controlled trial. Munteanu 2015 Br J Sports Med.