Pain management in the treatment of fibromyalgia : cardiovascular training vs oral analgesia

Abstract

Background: Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that causes widespread muscle pain (sometimes referred to as "myalgia") and extreme tenderness in many areas of the body. Additionally, a lot of patients report feeling tired, having trouble sleeping, getting headaches, and having mood disorders like depression and anxiety. Research Question and PICO: “In adult patients with Fibromyalgia, what effect does Cardiovascular training have on pain management compared to prescribed oral pain killers?”. The PICO elements that result from the study question are the fibromyalgia affected adult client group and the non-pharmaceutical pain relief intervention. As a result, a comparison of pharmacological and nonpharmacological pain treatment techniques is used, with the goal of achieving pain relief. The search sought to identify an effective treatment modality that alleviates fibromyalgia pain and improves quality of life. Method: A search was conducted in the following electronic databases: PubMed, Medline, Google Scholar, HyDi and Research Gate. The descriptors used were “Fibromyalgia” and “Pain Management.” Results: This study's inclusion criteria refer to primary sources of increased reliability. Furthermore, systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, meta-analysis, and cohort studies were used as these found to be relevant to the topic. Furthermore, the chosen clients had to be adults who had been suffering from chronic widespread pain for at least three months and met the criteria for primary fibromyalgia as defined by the American College of Rheumatology. Secondary sources, literature reviews, editorials, and opinion pieces, on the other hand, were not included. Additional criteria for eliminating articles included the presence of an adolescent population and fibromyalgia patients experiencing widespread pain for less than 3 months. Conclusions: The reviews of the literature lead to the conclusion that cardiovascular training had a clear positive effect on pain and quality of life when done frequently. However, a combination of pain killers and Cardiovascular Training is more effective in the treatment of Fibromyalgia than either of these alone.