Fibromyalgia Tender Points Test Yourself

If you have fibromyalgia you may have tender points at the back of the neck where the base of the skull and the neck meet.

Fibromyalgia tender points test yourself. Instead the diagnosis is made by a physical exam of pressure points that takes about five minutes. Your doctor can test the painful tender points during a physical exam. Fibromyalgia tender points are located in clusters around the neck chest shoulders elbows hips and knees. The test collects plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells pbmc in a small sample of your blood.

Educational materials by dr. This concise video clip demonstrates how to screen for and identify the 14 tender points that patients with fibromyalgia a chronic pain condition experience. Tell her about your other symptoms of. Old guidelines required tender points fibromyalgia is also often characterized by additional pain when firm pressure is applied to specific areas of your body called tender points.

A patient has to have 11 out of the 18 characteristic tender points and have suffered from the symptoms for more than 3 months to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia. In the past at least 11 of these 18 spots had to test positive for tenderness to diagnose fibromyalgia. It tests the concentration of cytokines within your blood sample. They re located on both sides of the body both above and below the waist.

But you also need to tell her about the exact pain you feel in those areas. Apply pressure with the pad of your thumb to the 18 tender points associated with fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia tender points routine lab tests do not detect the widespread pain of fibromyalgia. Hold the pressure for four seconds then rank the pain associated with the pressure on a scale from zero to 10 where zero represents no pain at all and 10 is the worst pain you ve ever experienced.