Prevalence of Myofascial Trigger Points in Patients with Non-Traumatic Unilateral Shoulder Pain

Abstract

Background: Shoulder pain is becoming problematic disorder with symptoms of mild to severe pain, restricted ranges and stiffness. Trigger points are knots in muscle fibers that show high response to pressure with symptoms of referred pain. Shoulder pain may be linked to trigger points and can target the impact of quality of life. However, there are limited studies that explore frequency of trigger points in non-traumatic unilateral shoulder pain. This research aims to find how many patients of non-traumatic origin of shoulder pain have trigger points.

Objective(s): To measure the frequency of myofascial trigger points in patients with non-traumatic unilateral shoulder pain.

Methodology: This observation based cross sectional study was held over a duration of four months, following the approval of the synopsis by the research ethics committee of the University of Lahore.  In this study data was collected from 273 patients of non-traumatic unilateral shoulder pain in Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Hospital Gujrat and were analyzed using SPSS version 23.0. Frequency tables, Bar charts, and Mean ± SD were used for descriptive analysis. The Chi-square test was used to determine the p- value for the relation between categorical variables.

Results: 273 patients of age 18 to 35 were examined for the presence of Myofascial trigger points out of which 67.4% patients were positive for one or more trigger points of these 50.18% were female patients and 47(17.22%) female patients that had score of <9 on myofascial pain scale were marked negative. Meanwhile in male patients 42(15.38%) had no trigger points on myofascial pain scale scoring <9 and 47(17.22%) scored ?9. Female of age between 34 and 35 were highly prevalent (21.61%) in developing trigger points. We found significant association between shoulder pain and trigger points with p-value of (<.001*).

Conclusion(s): Myofascial trigger points are highly prevalent in patients of non-traumatic unilateral shoulder pain. Of all the muscles examined, Infraspinatus muscle is most likely to develop trigger points. While looking for risk factors, female is more likely to develop myofascial pain.