Massages, mobilisation and stretching techniques in the most painful joint

Superficial massage in the most painful joint.

This protocol consists of:

• Six minutes of joint's mobilisation (two minutes of each technique).
• Nine minutes of ischemic pressure . Three minutes per muscle in this order: temporal muscle, masseter muscle and lateral pterygoid. Choosing the two most painful trigger points.
• Three minutes of trigemino's nerve stretching.

It's an instrument to measure subjective pain intensity. It consists of a horizontal line of ten centimetres in length. On the left side appears the description of "no pain" and on the right side "the worst unimaginable pain". The patient is asked to draw a line at the point where he would place the intensity of his pain. Subsequently, it will be measured with a millimeter ruler from the left end to the point indicated by the patient. It will be the way to express in millimeters the intensity of pain. A minimum change of between 1.5 and 2.4 is required to be clinically significant, taking as reference the significant minimum change of subjects with nonspecific neck pain.

It will use a rule of fifteen centimetres (starting from 0), to measure the maximum painless opening and the maximum total opening. The opening will be the measurement that is between the lower part of the incisors of the upper jaw and the upper part of the incisors of the lower jaw, not counting the vertical overbite. The patient will be asked to open their mouth as much as possible without pain and also as much as possible until their pain tolerance. It will be analyzed taking three measurements with a rest's interval of 30 seconds. The three measurements will be added up and the average will be taken to obtain the final result. The minimum detectable change to be clinically significant is 5 to 9 mm.

It measures the pain of the main masticatory muscles (temporal muscle, masseter muscle and lateral pterygoid muscle). The pain's pressure is analyzed three times at each point. The three measurements will be added up and the average will be taken to obtain the final result.

The patient is in supine, the investigators apply the tip of the algometer perpendicular to the muscle maintaining a pressure, which will progressively increase up to 1kg / cm2. Participants will be instructed to make a nonverbal signal at the time they start to experience pain, in order to obtain an accurate record. The minimum detectable change to be clinically significant is 1.13kg / cm2, taking as reference the nonspecific neck pain.

The effect and the level of patients' satisfaction will be measured, through a scale of 11 points. Patients will draw a circle depending on the change they have experienced from -5 (much worse), passing through 0 (unchanged) to the +5 (full recovery).