Terapia manual y terapia combinada en el abordaje de puntos gatillo: revisión bibliográfica

Myofascial trigger points are hyperirritable spots located in a taut band of skeletal muscle. Prevalence of this disease in the asymptomatic population is approximately 50%. Several modalities of treatment are used to inactivate trigger points, however, there is no evidence to show which is the most effective. The aim of this paper is to find out the effectiveness of combined therapy (ultrasound plus low or medium frequency current) compared to manual therapy to inactivate trigger points. A bibliographic research was done among the Cochrane, PEDro and PubMed databases, 24 papers related to the objective of the study being found. The results show that the manual techniques that present the most effect in the treatment of trigger points are ischemic compression and spray and stretch technique. No results were found on the combined therapy. This indicates the need to further investigate combined therapy and manual therapy in the treatment of myofascial trigger points and the different techniques studied in this paper.