Review article (meta-analysis)Prevalence of Myofascial Trigger Points in Spinal Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Section snippets
Methods
This systematic review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement guidelines.23 A protocol was written a priori and is available in Appendix 1 Presence of MTrPs in Different Spinal Health Conditions: Protocol for a Systematic Review, Methods Protocol, Appendix 2 Queries for the Bibliographic Databases, Appendix 3 Checklist for Assessing Study Quality, Modified From Downs and Black.
Results
Figure 1 is a flowchart of study retrieval, screening, and eligibility. The 3 experts in the field we contacted did not identify any additional studies besides those retrieved from the database searches and citation tracking. Twelve studies met the eligibility criteria and were included in this review40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51; 4 of these studies40, 42, 44, 49 were included in the meta-analyses. All studies were cross-sectional and assessed the point prevalence of MTrPs. The
Discussion
In this systematic review we aimed to synthesize the evidence on the prevalence of active and latent MTrPs in spinal disorders by including 12 cross-sectional studies assessing point prevalence in 6 different spinal pain disorders. Low-quality evidence was found for the pooled point prevalence of active MTrPs of different muscles in subjects with chronic NP. Point prevalences of active MTrPs in subjects with WAD and NSLBP were extracted from single studies that had low quality and/or very small
Conclusions
This systematic review shows that active and latent MTrPs can be present in different spinal disorders (eg, NP, WAD, NSLBP). However, these findings are at best underpinned by pooled estimates of point prevalence that are based on low-quality evidence, according to the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach. Most of the estimates for both active and latent MTrPs are based on individual studies with very small sample sizes and low methodologic quality. Future
Suppliers
- a.
EndNote; Thomson Reuters.
- b.
Comprehensive Meta-Analysis 2.0; Biostat.
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2022, Musculoskeletal Science and PracticeCitation Excerpt :Inclusion criteria for the current study consisted of: 1) neck pain for at least three months; 2) adults aged between 18 and 60 years, 3) identification of at least one active trigger point (TrP) in the upper trapezius muscle by palpation (painful spot in a palpable taut band that elicited pain referral and reproduced the neck pain symptoms of the participant), and, 4) no physical therapy for the neck-shoulder area in the previous six months. The upper trapezius was chosen because it has been reported that this muscle has the most TrPs (identified via palpation) in people with neck pain (Chiarotto et al., 2016) and because a therapist can reliably identify its location though palpation (Barbero et al., 2012). Subjects were excluded if they reported: 1) previous neck trauma; 2) neurological signs or symptoms; 3) systemic diseases, 4) pregnancy; 5) psychiatric problems, or, 6) fear of needles.
Supported by the Thim van der Laan Foundation.
This funding body did not have any role in design, conduction, analysis, and interpretation of data nor in writing this manuscript and deciding to submit this manuscript for publication. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of their funding bodies.
Disclosures: none.