Myofascial pain treatment in masticatory muscles: systematic review

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Myofascial pain is a syndrome, characterized by chronic pain in muscles or fascia in any body part. Myofascial pain syndrome (MPS) of the masticatory muscles is the most common form of Temporomandibular disorders (TMD), accounting for more than half of the patient cases. A clinical hallmark of MPS is a trigger point, which is defined as a localized deep tenderness in a taut band of skeletal muscle that is responsible for pain in the zone of reference. Currently, there a several treatment approaches regarding the release of trigger points that allows relieve the pain. However, no certain treatment modalities could be taken into account as the most suitable so far, since there are too few available or up-to-date studies comparing different treating approaches. AIM Our aim was to synthetise evidence regarding different treatment methods for myofascial pain in masticatory muscles in order to find out the most efficient one.METHODS Protocol of the review has been executed by using PRISMA approach. Systematic review was submitted to PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews (registration number: CRD42018084019). Electronic search was carried out in PubMed, PlosOne and The Cochrane Library databases using a combination of following keywords: Myofascial pain, trigger points, myofascial trigger points, masticatory muscles, treatment. The electronic search in turn returned 1091 published references. To be included, the study had to be published less than 10 years ago and written in English language. Such publications as reports, conference proceedings, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and theses or dissertations were not considered for analysis; only clinical trials were assessed. Only those clinical trials, which obtain post treatment follow-up period and were conducted on masticatory muscles were included. [...].