Archives of Physiotherapy 2016, 6(Suppl 1):11 DOI 10.1186/s40945-016-0022-4 MEETING ABSTRACTS Open Access 5th National Congress of the Italian Society of Physiotherapy Milan, Italy. 3–4 October 2015 Published: 14 October 2016 S1 S2 Criteria for exercises selection in subjects with low back pain Recent advances in pathophysiology and treatment of myofascial Alessandro Aina (
[email protected]) trigger points Physiotherapist, Dip. MDT, private practice, Milan, Italy Marco Barbero (
[email protected]) Archives of Physiotherapy 2016, 6(Suppl 1):S1 Rehabilitation Research Laboratory, Department of Business Economics, Health and Social Care, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of From the '70s until the '90s, in clinical trials aimed at studying the ef- Southern Switzerland, SUPSI, Manno, Switzerland fects of conservative interventions in people with low back pain, par- Archives of Physiotherapy 2016, 6(Suppl 1):S2 ticipants were randomly allocated to different treatment groups without a preliminary assessment that went beyond symptoms The original and the most commonly accepted definition of myofas- localization. The initial assumption was that patients exhibiting simi- cial pain syndrome has been formulated by Simons and Travell in lar symptoms localization should be considered as a unique group. the first volume of The Trigger point Manual edited in 1983 [1]. The Consequently, the effects of different interventions were similar and authors defined the myofascial pain syndromes as a regional pain guidelines merely suggested “Stay active”. characterized by the presence of one or more myofascial trigger Since the '80s some physiotherapists began to develop a number of points (MTrP). A MTrP is a distinctive clinical characteristic of this evaluation tests in order to identify specific subgroups among people painful syndrome and it is defined as a hyperirritable palpable nod- with low back pain and develop targeted treatments for each sub- ule contained in the skeletal muscle fibers.