Re: myoActivation for the treatment of pain and disability

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 61, No. 5, June 2019, Pages 201-202 Letters
By: Barry Koehler, MD, FRCPC

Dr Suzanne Montemuro’s letter to the editor (BCMJ 2019;61:111) states that “[myoActivation] has been shown to be effective in treating chronic pain originating in the soft tissues in the elderly as well as children.” However, my searches of PubMed and Google Scholar yielded no studies to support this. In fact, the only publication I could find was the descriptive paper cited in Dr Montemuro’s letter, containing only hypotheses and a few case studies. This scarcely qualifies as evidence of efficacy, let alone effectiveness, of this intervention. While Dr Montemuro has had pain relief in association with this intervention, personal experience is simply that. As Hippocrates is quoted, “experience [is] fallacious, and judgment difficult.”

Chronic pain is poorly understood and interventions are challenging to evaluate. Nonetheless, while good study design can be difficult and certainly should have biostatistical advice in the planning, the scientific method remains public domain software. Isolated case reports are no substitute.
—Barry Koehler, MD, FRCPC
Delta

This letter was submitted in response to “MyoActivation for the treatment of pain & disability.”

Barry Koehler, MD, FRCPC. Re: myoActivation for the treatment of pain and disability. BCMJ, Vol. 61, No. 5, June, 2019, Page(s) 201-202 - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply