Chronic pain syndrome—Fibromyalgia

Abstract

Fibromyalgia is a systemic disease with multiple muscle and fascia tender points, combined with chronic inflammation or neuropathies. Apart from feeling many tender points all over the body, patients also have many atypical symptoms, such as anxiety and migraine. Pain can be caused by even light activities. Additionally, the incidence rate of women aged 20–50 years is much higher than that of men, and the main clinical symptoms are chronic and extensive pain and tenderness. Patients with fibromyalgia have many common clinical comorbidities, such as depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, temporomandibular joint disorders, general numbness and tingling, irritable bowel syndrome, difficulty concentrating, and so on. The symptoms reduce the patient’s quality of life. Patients with fibromyalgia often have symptoms other than muscle pain. Thus, it is clinically referred to as fibromyalgia syndrome. Moreover, fibromyalgia is similar to the symptoms of many autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, and so on. Physicians should exclude these diseases to ensure accurate diagnosis.

Keywords

• chronic widespread pain
• fibromyalgia
• fibromyalgia syndrome (fms)
• myofascial pain syndrome
• temporomandibular disorders (tmj disorders
• tmd)