Masood, Raisa, LeRoy, Taryn E, Moverman, Michael A et al. · Global spine journal · 2024 · DOI
This review looked at seven studies involving over 40,000 patients to understand how people with fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions fare after spine surgery. The main finding was that patients with fibromyalgia were more likely to use opioid painkillers for longer periods after surgery and reported less improvement in their symptoms compared to those without fibromyalgia. Very little research exists on how other conditions like ME/CFS affect spine surgery outcomes.
ME/CFS is recognized as a functional somatic syndrome alongside fibromyalgia, yet receives minimal research attention in surgical outcomes literature. This review highlights that patients with chronic conditions characterized by central sensitization and altered pain processing may experience different post-surgical trajectories, including higher opioid dependence risk—information critical for informed surgical decision-making and perioperative management in ME/CFS populations.
This review does not establish causation between functional somatic syndromes and poor surgical outcomes, only association. The small number of studies examining ME/CFS specifically (likely zero in the final seven included studies) means findings cannot be directly extrapolated to ME/CFS patients. Observational study designs cannot exclude confounding variables or selection bias that might explain differential outcomes.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Masood, Raisa, LeRoy, Taryn E, Moverman, Michael A, Feldman, Matthew W, Rogerson, Ashley, & Salzler, Matthew J (2024). Functional Somatic Syndromes Are Associated With Varied Postoperative Outcomes and Increased Opioid Use After Spine Surgery: A Systematic Review.. Global spine journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/21925682231217706
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-masood-2024-functional-somatic,
author = {Masood, Raisa and LeRoy, Taryn E and Moverman, Michael A and Feldman, Matthew W and Rogerson, Ashley and Salzler, Matthew J},
title = {Functional Somatic Syndromes Are Associated With Varied Postoperative Outcomes and Increased Opioid Use After Spine Surgery: A Systematic Review.},
journal = {Global spine journal},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1177/21925682231217706},
note = {PubMed: 38124313},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/masood-2024-functional-somatic},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/masood-2024-functional-somatic
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.