Pain, depression, health anxiety and their effects on quality of life in patients with chronic cervical myofascial pain syndrome

Myofascial pain syndrome (MAS)is a regional pain syndrome that sometimes occurs with autonomic dysfunction that occurs in muscle and /or fascias and originating from the so-called trigger points, pain and stiffness in the muscles accompanying pain, reflected pain, sensitivity, sensory changes, regional twitching. The most common complaint of patients is neck and upper back pain, which is commonly caused by trapezius muscle involvement. MAS is one of the major diseases that cause chronic pain. Chronic pain may be accompanied by sleeplessness, anxiety and depression. This situation causes a decrease in the quality of life of patients and emerges as a medical, social and economic problem. Psychological factors may cause physical disasters and physical disorders also affect the psychology of patients negatively. The causal relationship between physical pain and psychiatric disorders cannot be explained. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of pain, health anxiety, depression level and quality of life in cervical MAS patients who have a common health problem in the general population. We included 60 patients with chronic cervical MAS and 60 healthy volunteers aged 20-60 years. We questioned the socio-demographic characteristics of the patients and the control group. We evaluated the resting pain with a visual anolog scale (VAS) of 10 cm, quality of life with short form-36 (SF-36), emotional depression with beck depression scale (BDI), and health anxiety levels with health anxiety inventory-short form (SAE). There was no statistically significant difference between the mean age and education level of the groups. However, the frequency of female gender and smoking in the Mas Group was statistically higher than in the control group. In patients with MAS, SAE and BDI scores were found to be statistically higher than those of controls, while SF-36 scores were pound to be statistically lower than controls. While there was a negative correlation between patients's BDI scores and SF-36 subgroups, there was no correlation between SAE scores and SF-36 subgroups. The quality of life in MAS patients was lower than the control group and these results were correlated with depression level. Depression was seen to negatively affect the quality of life of MAS patients. The presence of depression and anxiety in patients with MAS cause the quality of life of the patients to decrease. Therefore, the psychological conditions of patients with MAS should be reviewed and appropriate treatment planning should be done. Keywords: Myofascial pain syndrome, depression, health anxiety, quality of life