Original articlePain Physiology Education Improves Pain Beliefs in Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Compared With Pacing and Self-Management Education: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial
Section snippets
Design
An information leaflet was handed to patients intending to participate. When patients agreed to participate, they were asked to sign the informed consent form. The study protocol was approved by the ethical committee of the University Hospital Brussels.
Patients were randomly allocated to the experimental or the control group. Both the experimental (pain physiology) and the control (pacing and self-management) education involved one 30-minute 1-on-1 interactive information session. Immediately
Results
This study consisted of 48 patients with CFS, 8 men (16.7%) and 40 women (83.3%), who were randomly allocated to either an experimental group or a control group. In the experimental group, 2 women did not complete the study. One was pressed for time, and the other woman was not able to lie on her stomach (for pain threshold assessment of the calf and back) because of restricted mobility. The flow of participants through the study is presented in figure 1. Group characteristics are shown in
Discussion
After a 30-minute educational session on pain physiology, patients presented an increased understanding of pain and reported the intention to ruminate less compared with a control group.
Conclusions
We can conclude that patients with CFS are indeed able to increase their understanding of the neurophysiology of pain, because they scored much better on the Neurophysiology Pain Test after the pain physiology education. The pain physiology education has even immediate effects on ruminating (part of catastrophizing) about the pain. No therapy effect could be revealed for the pain thresholds. Pain physiology education can be seen as an efficient component of the biopsychosocial approach to
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to K. De Meirleir, MD, for diagnosing the study participants, to A. Farasyn, PhD, for kindly providing his expertise on pressure pain threshold assessment, and to Karen Wallman, PhD, for editing the article.
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Supported by the Higher Institute of Physiotherapy, Department of Health Sciences, Artesis University College Antwerp, Belgium (grant no. G 807), the Faculty of Physical Education and Physiotherapy—Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium (OZR project OZ.R. 1234/MFYS Wer2), and a postdoctoral research fellowship of the Research Foundation Flanders—Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO).
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.