2022 challenges in rehabilitation

Dear colleagues,

First, let me start with wishing you all a happy 2022 on behalf of the Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation team! We hope that the new year may be a year of new hope, freedom and health!

For 2022, we will again face the challenges this COVID-19 pandemic opposes for the upcoming year, or even years. However, looking back on 2021, I have been surprised by how many high quality studies have been published in JBMR despite COVID-19, and while COVID-19 studies dominated the research community, it’s been heartwarming to see so many studies conducted in regular musculoskeletal health and rehabilitation. The resilience that we showed during this pandemic is exciting to see. We encourage you all to keep up the important work!

In this first issue of volume 35, 20 articles are published, four of which are free to read: three reviews and the Editor’s Choice article. The first review by Hernando-Garijo et al. describes the current status on non-pharmacological and conservative therapies in patients with fibromyalgia. This important work highlights the evidence for the work performed by professionals in rehabilitation in the short term in a still not-so well understood disorder. It also states that the results in the medium and long term are not well established which could be an aim for future studies. The second review by Randhawa et al. aimed to collect the evidence of a frequently missed diagnosis, not only for inguinal pain, but also for low back pain: Maigne Syndrome. The

authors mostly reviewed case studies, stressing the need for better diagnostic and effect studies of this potential subgroup in low back pain. The third review by Pincao et al. deals with conservative care for patients with low back pain. Specifically, the effects of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) on pain and functioning were the objectives for the study. While many international guidelines focus on functional therapies, exercise and graded increase of activities, it appears that PNF may still be an evidence-based addition to relieve pain, improve function and pulmonary function, while effects on dynamic balance could not be found. The authors stress the need for better and high quality future studies.

The fourth free to read article is the Editor’s Choice article, which is granted to an impactful study in the field of musculoskeletal rehabilitation. This issue’s Editor’s Choice is granted to Zhang et al., who are applauded for their important work on a perioperative intervention, both to prevent function after surgery, as well as to start physical rehabilitation as soon as possible. The authors find significant better improvement of a multimodal perioperative program compared to the control group, which has especially been established in the period within the first week post-operative.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue and wish you all the best for 2022.

Remko Soer

Editor-in-Chief