Current pain and headache reports
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Clinical understanding and management of myofascial pain is overlooked frequently when dealing with pain. Myofascial pain is defined as pain or autonomic phenomena referred from active trigger points, with associated dysfunction. The trigger point is a focus of hyperirritability in the muscle that, when compressed, is locally tender and, if sensitized, gives rise to referred pain and tenderness. ⋯ Myofascial pain is poorly understood, which results too often in underdiagnosis and poor management. The pathogenesis likely has a central mechanism with peripheral clinical manifestations. The therapy for myofascial pain requires enhancing central inhibition through pharmacology or behavioral techniques and simultaneously reducing peripheral inputs through physical therapies including exercises and trigger point-specific therapy.
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2004
ReviewAn expansion of Simons' integrated hypothesis of trigger point formation.
Simons' integrated hypothesis proposed a model of trigger point (TrP) activation to explain known TrP phenomena, particularly endplate noise. We propose an expansion of this hypothesis to account for new experimental data and established muscle pathophysiology.
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2004
ReviewDoes osteoarthritis of the lumbar spine cause chronic low back pain?
The lumbar spine is a common location for osteoarthritis. The axial skeleton demonstrates the same classic alterations of cartilage loss, joint instability, and osteophytosis characteristic of symptomatic disease in the appendages. Despite these similarities, questions remain regarding the lumbar spine facet joints as a source of chronic back pain. ⋯ Single photon emission computed tomography scans of the axial skeleton are able to identify painful facet joints with increased activity that may be helped by local anesthetic injections. Low back pain is responsive to therapies that are effective for osteoarthritis in other locations. Osteoarthritis of the lumbar spine does cause low back pain.
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Treatment of pain of urogenital origin, chronic pelvic pain syndrome, can be frustrating for patients and physicians. The usual approaches do not always produce the desired results. ⋯ Referred pain from myofascial trigger points can mimic visceral pain syndromes and visceral pain syndromes can induce trigger point development and myofascial pain and dysfunction. The referred pain syndrome can long outlast the initial event, making diagnosis difficult.
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Although tension-type headache is at least as prevalent as migraine in children and adolescents, in contrast to migraine, childhood tension-type headache has received limited research attention. Follow-up studies have shown that migraine may reverse in tension-type headache and vice versa. ⋯ It is very important to recognize these children and to intervene. Further studies are needed to clarify the pathophysiology of pediatric tension-type headache.