Multimodal physical therapy for treating primary and secondary fibromyalgia – German multimodal rheumatologic complex treatment

Abstract

Objectives

Multimodal rheumatologic complex therapy (MRCT) delivers various modalities of physical therapy (PT) to patients with rheumatic diseases. We conducted a monocentric retrospective analysis of the effects of MRCT on pain and disease activity in patients with primary (PFM) and secondary fibromyalgia (SFM).

Methods

102 treatment episodes (N) applied to 83 patients (n) with PFM (N = 50; n = 39) and SFM (N = 52, n = 44) were analysed. Of the latter, 23 had rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and 21 spondyloarthritis (SpA). We evaluated changes in pain intensity, functional status and disease activity before and after a MRCT episode. In addition, we assessed influences of various patient characteristics and analysed treatment responses in PFM and SFM.

Results

MRCT resulted in significant reduction of pain (NRS, p < 0.0001) and disease activity (FIQ, p = 0.001). In SFM, disease activity of the underlying disease (i.e. RA or SpA) was significantly reduced. Various aspects of the disease did not have a significant effect on the outcome parameters. Treatment effects were not significantly different in PFM and SFM.

Conclusion

MRCT significantly decreases pain and disease activity in patients with FM, irrespective of the course of disease, and is equally effective in both PFM and SFM, thus underlining the importance of PT in the treatment of FM.

Keywords:

• Multimodal rheumatologic complex therapy
• fibromyalgia
• physical therapy
• pain
• fibromyalgia impact questionnaire
• non-pharmacologic treatment

Ethical approval

This study was performed according to the declaration of Helsinki and after receiving approval by the local ethics committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen (vote no. 231/16).

As this study was conducted retrospectively, informed consent of patients was not obtained. This was approved by the local ethics committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen (vote no. 231/16).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

All authors approved the submitted manuscript and contributed actively to the study.