The Efficacy of Physiotherapy Interventions for Recovery of Patients Suffering from Piriformis Syndrome: A Literature Review

Piriformis syndrome is a neuromuscular disease mostly caused by compression of the sciatic nerve by the piriformis muscle. The purpose of this study was to review the efficacy of different types of physiotherapy interventions on the signs and symptoms in patients with piriformis syndrome.

PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases were searched to identify the published articles on the efficacy of physiotherapy interventions for the treatment of piriformis syndrome. The search was conducted from 1980 to august 2020. The used keywords were: piriformis syndrome, manual therapy, muscle stretch and electrotherapy. The references of the included studies were also reviewed. Finally, after studying 752 probable articles and removing irrelevant ones, 10 clinical trial articles were selected.

The included studies presented that manual therapy accompanying with stretching techniques show great improvement in range of motion of the hip joint and reducing pain in patients with piriformis syndrome. It is impossible to conclude a certain method of electrotherapy modalities such as laser and shockwave therapy for the treatment of patients, due to lack of valid studies.

Based on the current evidence, it seems that using muscle energy techniques (MET) with stretching of the piriformis and other hip muscles are effective in reduction of pain and disability and improvement of range of motion in patients suffering from piriformis syndrome.