Health education home-based program in females with fibromyalgia: a pilot study

The objective of this study was to assess the long- and short-term effects of a multimodal program, specifically designed to be carried out by fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) patients themselves, after a 12-week period of learning. Thirty female FMS patients volunteered for the study. The learning phase consisted on twelve weekly sessions of an hour, combining muscular resistance and flexibility exercises with techniques of breathing and relaxing, plus a half-hour incentive physiotherapy session. Flexibility, illness impact and pain were assessed at the beginning of the study, at the end of the learning phase and six months afterwards (follow-up). Twenty-one patients completed the programme. At the end of the learning phase, the improvement in the patients' physical condition was significant, as was the impact of the illness. Thirty-three percent of the patients continued training during the follow-up period and kept up the improvements achieved. The self-controlled multimodal programme was efficient in improving flexibility and reducing the impact of the illness in women fibromyalgia patients. However, adherence was poor when patients had to exercise on their own.