Juvenile fibromyalgia: intensive therapy relieves pain
Children with fibromyalgia experienced improvements in pain and function without medication after an intensive programme of physical therapy, occupational therapy and psychosocial services, according to a study in The Journal of Pediatrics.
Experts assessed the short-term and one-year outcomes of 64 children with fibromyalgia (mainly girls, average age was 16 years) treated with intensive physical and occupational therapy and psychotherapy.
All medication used for fibromyalgia was discontinued and the volunteers were treated with five to six hours of intensive physical therapy and occupational therapy every day, and at least four hours of psychosocial services every week. Physical therapy involved long-distance community walking and running up and down stairs, with the aim of re-establishing normal function and maximising aerobic conditioning. Psychosocial services involved cognitive and behavioural therapy individually or in groups, along with art, music and family therapies.
The children were tested with standard scales for pain and quality of life at the start of the programme, at the end of the treatment and one year later.
Outcome
The children reported that they had significantly improved pain and function, and objective measurements backed this up. For examples, at the end of the programme the average pain score had decreased significantly, and one year later 33% of the volunteers reported no pain.
“Our children with long-standing fibromyalgia exhibited significant improvement in nearly all of the functional and pain measures that we applied,” the authors write. “Both the dose of physical therapy/occupational therapy and the quality of the therapy differed from traditional physical therapy/occupational therapy, in that we focused on desensitization and prolonged aerobics, strengthening, and functional activities individualized to the subjects, and did not inquire about pain or let pain or the fear of pain stop them.
“We believe that this focus on function rather than pain helps children break the pain cycle and overcome the long-standing functional and pain limitations with which they presented.”
“Children with fibromyalgia can be successfully treated without the use of medications and can regain normal function, achieve remission or marked reduction of pain, and experience increased quality of life with an interdisciplinary approach that uses much more intensive [physical and occupational therapy] than is common in most pain programs, along with cognitive, behavioral, and other psychosocial supports.”
Click here to read the original research.
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Image credit: Lisa Redfern
