Fascial manipulation for musculoskeletal disorders: A scoping review

To synthesize the available literature on myofascial manipulation interventions and adverse events to assess the knowledge gaps and select adaptations to determine the optimal approach.

PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, Embase, MEDLINE, and the Physiotherapy Evidence Database were searched from inception to December 11, 2022. This review included patients with musculoskeletal disorders, pain, and dysfunction. Outcome measures included pain and disability. Studies that were interventional trials, observational studies, or case reports, with no restrictions on the region, race, sex, or language of the original paper were included. Author names, year of publication, title, purpose, review question, diseases covered, adverse events, journal type, subjects, disease stage, pain, and functional impairment ratings were summarized using Microsoft Excel.

A total of 4645 titles and abstracts were retrieved from the database. Twenty-six studies meeting the inclusion criteria were included in this scoping review. Fascial manipulation studies often have pain as an outcome, are commonly performed in Italy and India, and target the chronic phase of the disease. No serious adverse events were observed.

Research on fascial manipulation is gradually increasing but is still scarce. It is expected that more randomised controlled trials will be conducted in the future to compare the results with those of other manual and exercise therapies and to elucidate the underlying mechanism.