Influence of Patient Expectations With Lateral Epicondylalgia in Applying Mobilization With Movement

Lateral epicondylalgia affects people of both gender between 1 and 3% of the world population, with up to 15% in the working population reaching an average of 12 weeks off work for this reason. One of the conservative treatments that have shown effective is the mobilization with movement, whose mechanisms of action are not known. According Bialosky et al., possible effects of manual therapy are based on the neurophysiological mechanisms at peripheral, spinal and supraspinal level. Among the mechanisms to supraspinal level is the placebo effect, which is influenced by psychological factors such as conditioning and expectations.

Changing expectations to determine the influence on the treatment has been studied in healthy subjects, showing improvement with positive expectations and worsening to negative and neutral expectations.

However the result of modifying the previous expectations for treatment in patients with pain has not been studied.

The aim of our study is to test the influence that positive expectations have on the effectiveness of treatment with mobilization with movement in patients with lateral epicondylalgia.