Myofascial Massage in the Treatment of Chronic Low Back Pain

It is a scale for the assessment of pain and it's based on a ten point scale, where 0 means no pain and 10 the greatest pain ever both at rest and during movements.

This scales evaluates the degree of functional impairment in activities of daily life caused by pain. It consist of ten sections including pain intensity, personal care, lifting, walking, sitting standing, sleeping, sex, social life and travelling. Each section includes six sentences relating to different level of limitation in the same activity (0: no limitation, 5: maximal limitation).

The questionnaire is divided into 32 items organized into eight subcategories consisting of three to seven items each. The subcategories measure: the awareness of unpleasant, pleasant or neutral body sensations, the tendency not to ignore the feelings of pain or discomfort, not to worry about painful sensations or discomfort, the ability not to draw attention away from body sensations, awareness of the existence of connections between body sensations and emotional status, the ability to control the psychological stress by focusing on body sensations, the ability to listen to your body and the belief that the experiences coming from your body are safe and reliable. It 'a multidimensional assessment questionnaire and self-administered. For each subcategory, the patient may express a score from 0 (never) to 5 (always), the highest score corresponds to a higher level of awareness.

The questionnaire consist in twelve questions that explore eight sub-categories that measure the physical activity, role limitations due to physical health and emotional state, physical pain, the perception of general health, vitality, social activities, mental health and changes in health status and two indices that summarize the overall assessment of the subject with respect to his physical health (ISF) and mental (ISM).

It includes nine parameters: pain experienced in a sitting position, travelling, standing,walking and lifting weights and the need to put on or remove footwear, sleep disturbance, life restriction and sex life restriction to measure. The maximum score is 9 points. A score > 5 indicates significant disability.

Its an index monitored by a plethysmograph that records the heart rate variability (variation in the time interval between a heartbeat and the other) a parameter capable of expressing a person's level of stress through the coherence ratio.