Physiotherapy in Women With Peripheral Persistent Pain Following Breast Cancer Treatment

Introduction: chronic shoulder pain is a frequent consequence after breast cancer treatment with a reported prevalence of 25% to 60% and is commonly termed "Persistent Pain after Breast Cancer Treatment" (PPBCT). Frequently, PPBCT includes neuropathic pain due to damage of neural tissue during surgery. However, recent studies, consider that myofascial pain syndrome and heightened mechanosensitivity of neural tissue can be also present in this women. Although PPBCT is typically managed with pharmacological treatment,currently, physiotherapy is presented as an alternative method. Physiotherapy in relation to the shoulder, commonly, focuses its treatment with therapeutic exercise. In this sense, there is great controversy about which are the most appropriate exercises. Recent authors, bet for more precise and analytical exercises in relation with scapula and reject conventional exercises for the shoulder. Taking into account each of the sources of pain presented by these women and the benefits of therapeutic exercise, it would be interesting to study which approach of physiotherapy treatment would be more appropriate in these women. Subjects and methods: A randomized clinical trial, the examiner being blinded unaware of the intervention group to which subjects were assigned. Participants will be randomly assigned to three groups: An experimental group, where the participants will be treated with Multimodal Physiotherapy; Another experimental group where will be realized Scapular Exercises only; And a third group where will be done Shoulder Conventional Exercises. Pre- intervention, immediate post-intervention, 3, and 6 months assessments will be made. The selection criteria will be: women with peripheral persistent pain following breast cancer treatment (surgery and/or radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy) with pain for at least 6 months. The participants must understand and sign freely Informed Consent. Sample size: 30 women for each group. Data Analysis: A descriptive analysis of all variables will be performed. It will be established for all cases a confidence level of 95% (p \<0.05). The effectiveness will be assessed by comparing the experienced change of the three goups in outcome variables between physicaltherapy examinations.