Thursday, June 22, 2017

Visually induced analgesia during massage treatment in chronic back pain patients

Abstract

Background

Previous findings suggest that watching sites of experimental and chronic pain can exert an analgesic effect. Our present study investigates whether watching one's back during massage increases the analgesic effect of this treatment in chronic back pain patients.

Methods

Twenty patients with chronic back pain were treated with a conventional massage therapy. During this treatment, patients received a real-time video feedback of their own back. Watching a neutral object, a video of another person of the same sex being massaged, a picture of the own back, and keeping one's eyes closed were used as controls. These conditions were presented in randomized order on five separate days.

Results

All conditions yielded significant decreases in habitual pain intensity. The effect of real-time video feedback of the own back on massage treatment was the strongest and differed significantly from the effect of watching a neutral object, but not from the other control conditions, which may have induced slight effects of their own.

Conclusions

Repeated real-time video feedback may be useful during massage treatment of chronic pain.

Significance

This study shows that inducing visual induced analgesia during massage treatment can be helpful in alleviating chronic pain.



from European Journal of Pain http://ift.tt/2sDeh9O
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