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So let's talk more about what fibromyalgia is and in particular what the diagnostic testing is.
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Now, we used to use these 18 trigger points shown here as the diagnostic test for fibromyalgia.
00:12
The clinician would basically push on those 18 areas and if more than 11 of them triggered pain
and were particularly tender, we would say fibromyalgia. But those increasing recognition over
the past 5 or 10 years that this approach fail to incorporate these varied somatic complaints
that patients experience. Patients basically oftentimes report fatigue, cognitive symptoms,
waking unrefreshed, and a variety of other somatic complaints. And so the diagnostic criteria
were changed to incorporate 2 main factors; the widespread pain index which is shown here
which rather than the physician pushing on a bunch of locations, the patient subjectively reports
where they're having different types of pain amongst these different colored areas and then
secondly the symptoms severity score. This is a description of a constellation of different
somatic complaints that patients may report and patients indicate again subjectively which of
these symptoms they are experiencing. There are central type symptoms, cognitive ones,
constitutional ones, then you've got muscular symptoms, joint involvement, urinary symptoms
like she has been describing, don't forget about the eyes, joint of the jaw or the
temporo-mandibular joint, issues with her chest wall, her stomach, and reproductive system
as well. So the scoring system that we now use for fibromyalgia involves that widespread pain
index and the symptom severity score. I know you'll note that when you look at all of those somatic
symptoms that patients may report, you may see some overlap with some other non-inflammatory
chronic pain syndromes. In addition to fibromyalgia, you may see patients report interstitial
cystitis which our patient had. Tension headaches, myofascial pain syndrome which again is a
localized or regionally associated sub-type of fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome,
temporo-mandibular disorders, and then chronic fatigue syndrome also known as myalgic
encephalomyelitis. So fibromyalgia in these related conditions are all considered diseases of
what's called centralized pain and that's in contrast with nociceptive pain. If you get punched
in the arm, you'll have pain because of nociceptors in the cutaneous tissue there and neuropathic
pain where a peripheral nerve itself is diseased or involved in some way. Centralized pain
means that you won't find any evidence of inflammation on a tissue biopsy, instead the pathology
in these conditions is believed to be a dysregulation in central processing of peripheral inputs
leading to increased pain sensitivity. Complicating matters is the fact that many of these
patients actually do have some other objective pain problem. For example, perhaps they have
lupus or rheumatoid arthritis or some prior trauma that's believed to have likely set up this
pain problem and primed the pain receptors such that they could develop centralized pain
down the road. So let's talk about the management of fibromyalgia. First and foremost, it's
about patient education. Patients oftentimes feel stigmatized because they've been to the emergency
room multiple times for pain and nothing is ever found and they may feel dismissed by providers.
03:31
So you have to highlight to the patient that fibromyalgia is a real illness, it's characterized by
the dysfunction of central integration of pain perception. It is benign, it's not life threatening,
it's not disfiguring, and fortunately it tends not to progress. Patients should also be told that
physical and emotional stress clearly exacerbates fibromyalgia and that needs to be a focus of
treatment. You want your patients to increase their activity level, increase their sleep
hygiene, and address any underlying mood disorders because we know that addressing those
things will help to decrease their experience of pain. When medications are required, their
gabapentinoids like gabapentin, Cymbalta, and pregabalin, those are all the medications of the
gabapentinoid family. TCAs most commonly amitriptyline starting in very low doses maybe
5-10 mg at night and then other things like Flexeril or cyclobenzaprine have also been shown
to be helpful. Looking at the cognitive domain, cognitive behavioral therapy hands down very
effective treatment for fibromyalgia without any accompanying side effects of course because
it's not a medication and physical therapy is really important, getting these patients to be
active rather than withdrawn and isolating. So, let's highlight a few key points. Fibromyalgia
is a chronic, idiopathic, non-inflammatory, central pain syndrome characterized by diffuse
musculoskeletal pain. It is a clinical diagnosis or a diagnosis of exclusion and again excluding the
other diagnosis was fairly straight forward with an ANA, a TSH, and a CPK and some basic blood
work. It is associated with neuropsychological and somatic complaints especially when patients
report feeling foggy or having difficulty concentrating and the management is going to be
multimodal, you're going to do physical therapy, maybe CBT, maybe medications and a real
focus on education. There's our list of potential medications, sleep hygiene is important and as
I said CBT.