Massage therapy in chronic musculoskeletal pain management: a scoping review of the literature

Abstract

Introduction. Massage therapy with soft tissue manipulation is one of the most common used techniques in pain management. The aim of this study was to identify the numerical ratio of articles in relevant literature about massage therapy in chronic musculoskeletal pain management.
Material and Methods. We identified articles through database, including Web of Science, PEDro, and PubMed and hand-searching strategies. Articles published in the last 10 years related through databases according to predefined inclusion criteria were identified. Relevant articles were collected by using the following key words: pain; massage; pain and massage. The articles were selected dividing into three groups: meta-analysis studies; systematic reviews; randomized controlled studies.
Results. We identified 690175 articles for the three key words: 676638 articles regarding “pain”, 10532 articles regarding “massage”, and 3005 articles regarding “pain and massage”. Among 3005 articles, there were 1469 (48.0%) randomized controlled studies, 508 (17.0%) systematic reviews, and 78 (2.6%) meta-analysis studies, respectively. The Swedish massage was seen the most common used massage technique.
Conclusion. The key statistic inference from this review is that massage therapy is preferred technique in chronic musculoskeletal pain management.

Key words:

chronic musculoskeletal pain, massage, literature

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