Myofascial release as a method of treatment for bicipital tendinopathy in patients attending sports medicine clinic of Teaching Hospital, Karapitiya

Objectives: Bicipital tendinopathy causes shoulder pain and reduced range of motion (ROM). Analgesics and physiotherapy are used as treatments. The objective is to study the effectiveness of myofascial release for bicipital tendinopathy.
Methods: Sixty patients with anterior shoulder pain were randomly allocated to control and experimental groups (n=30/group). Control group received conventional physiotherapy for 10 days, while experimental group received myofascial release. Pain scores and ROM of the shoulder were assessed using a visual analog scale and digital inclinometer respectively, on days 1, 5 and 10. On each day, measurements were obtained before and after intervention.
Results: Control group consisted of 8 females and 22 males with a mean age of 35.1± 15.2 years. Interventional group consisted of 9 females and 21 males with a mean age of 34.4± 12.3 years. Rest pain for control group on day 1, day 5 and day 10 (pre and post intervention) were 6.7±0.29,6.03±0.29, 5.63±0.29, 5.17±0.24, 4.90±0.26, 4.43±0.27, respectively. Same parameters for the experimental group were 6.60±0.35, 5.00±0.39, 4.30±0.30, 3.60±0.26, 3.10±0.26, 2.56±0.25, respectively. Both interventions significantly reduced pain scores compared to the baseline. Notably, experimental group demonstrated a greater reduction in pain score from day 1 to day 10 compared to the control group (p<0.0001). In the control group, change in ROM from the baseline for each session was 2.96⁰±0.97, 3.66⁰±1.22, 4.56⁰±1.27, 4.43⁰±1.07, and 5.20⁰±1.17. In the experimental group, the corresponding values were 15.10⁰±5.37, 16.43⁰±5.51, 20.87⁰±6.66, 22.67⁰±7.41, and 23.33⁰±7.71. The experimental group showed significantly greater improvement in ROM compared to the control group at each session (p<0.001).
Conclusions: Myofascial release works better than conventional physiotherapy for bicipital tendinopathy as it results in greater improvement of pain and ROM. Further research warrants to explore what could be the exact mechanism by which those improvements were happened.