Thermal Imaging Ruled out As a Supplementary Assessment in Patients with Fibromyalgia: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: The diagnosis of fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) syndrome is often complicated and relies on diagnostic criteria based mostly on the symptoms reported by patients. Implementing objective complementary tests would be desirable to better characterize this population.

Objective: The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to compare the skin temperature at rest using thermography in women with FMS and healthy women.

Methods: Eighty-six women with FMS and 92 healthy controls volunteered to participate. The temperature of all participants was measured by infra-red thermography, registering the skin surface temperature (minimum, maximum and average) at rest in different areas: neck, upper and lower back, chest, knees and elbows. In order to analyze the differences in the skin temperature between groups, inferential analyses of the data were performed using Mann-Whitney U test.

Results: The results showed no significant difference in skin temperature between groups in the neck, upper back, chest and elbows (p>0.05). The lower back and knees areas showed significant differences between groups (p<0.05), although these differences did not reach a minimum of clinically detectable change.

Conclusions: Women with fibromyalgia presented no clinically meaningful reduction or difference in skin temperature at rest when compared with a group of healthy women. The infra-red thermography is not an effective supplementary assessment tool in women with fibromyalgia.