PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?
Response: Our team identified 17 systematic reviews regarding 13 health conditions about massage therapy that had assessed certainty or quality of evidence about massage therapy for pain. Most reviews concluded that: ‘massage had a beneficial effect but the certainty of evidence was low or very low.’ This means “Our confidence in the effect estimate is limited. The true effect may be substantially different from the estimate of effect,” or “We have very little confidence in the effect estimate” (GRADE working group). Despite massage therapy having been the subject of hundreds of randomized clinical trials and dozens of systematic reviews about adult health conditions since 2018, there were few conclusions that had greater than a low certainty of evidence.
PainRelief.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: The evidence map builds on a prior iteration of a literature review performed by this team in 2018. Massage therapy is a safe and evidence-based treatment for some conditions. This map helps synthesize the literature for the busy clinicians who may be developing a comprehensive treatment plan with their patients which may include medical massage therapy.
PainRelief.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Response: Studies comparing massage therapy with placebo or sham controls in place are probably not the priority; rather, the priority should be studies comparing massage therapy with other recommended, accepted, and active therapies for pain. More high-quality randomized clinical trials are needed to provide a stronger evidence base to assess the effect of massage therapy on pain. For painful conditions that do not have at least moderate-certainty evidence supporting use of massage therapy, new studies that address the limitations of existing research are needed. The field of massage therapy would be best advanced by educating the wider research community with clearer definitions of massage therapy and whether it is appropriate to include multiple modalities in the same systematic review.
Disclosures: This study was funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs who helped set the scope of the study and reviewed a draft report of the findings. None of the authors have any conflicts of interest with massage therapy.
Citation: Mak S, Allen J, Begashaw M, et al. Use of Massage Therapy for Pain, 2018-2023: A Systematic Review. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(7):e2422259. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.22259
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Last Updated on August 1, 2024 by PainRelief.com