The ineffectiveness of stretching exercises in patients with fibromyalgia: a systematic review discussion

In a recent study published in Clinical Rheumatology, Støve et al. summarized the effectiveness of stretching exercises on fibromyalgia symptoms and examined the content and quality of the current evidence. The authors emphasized that the main limitation is due to problems with the heterogeneity of the interventions and small sample sizes [1], and this is true. However, it is possible to pool the samples, divide them into control and treatment groups, assess the homogeneity of variance between the samples and their variables, and investigate further. The aim of this article was to present this comparison method to analyze the nine articles pooled in the systematic review [2‐10]. In addition, it was investigated which clinical trials tested and/or obtained the minimal clinically important difference (14%) on the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (as this is the most well-known assessment used in fibromyalgia) [11]. …