Abstract
Chronic pelvic pain is lower abdominal pain lasting at least 6 months, occurring continuously
or intermittently and not associated exclusively with menstruation or intercourse.
The involvement of the musculoskeletal system in chronic pelvic pain has been increasingly
demonstrated. However, few studies exclusively examining abdominal myofascial pain
syndrome as a cause of chronic pelvic pain in women are available. Therefore the objective
of this manuscript is to describe the association between abdominal myofascial pain
syndrome and chronic pelvic pain in women, and comment on methods for diagnosis and
therapeutic options. There is evidence that the musculoskeletal system is compromised
in some way in most women with chronic pelvic pain and that in 15% of these cases
chronic pelvic pain is associated with abdominal myofascial pain syndrome but the
scarcity of published data impairs the definition of protocols for the diagnosis and
treatment of this disease. Abdominal myofascial pain syndrome is a highly prevalent
disease associated with CPP, and because of this physicians should get used to make
a precise and early diagnosis in order to avoid additional and unnecessary investigation.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 13, 2009
Accepted:
June 22,
2009
Received in revised form:
May 6,
2009
Received:
December 10,
2008
Footnotes
☆This study was conducted at University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
