Surveys undertaken in various developed and developing countries have shown that musculoskeletal pain is a major health problem. Knee and low back pain is considered to be the highest prevailing factor for musculoskeletal pain. Musculoskeletal problems at present are seen as the most common cause of severe pain and disability. Approximately 2 million people across the world suffer from musculoskeletal pain each year.the use of thermotherapies (heat therapies) for musculoskeletal pain has been in existence from the days of ancient Greek and Egyptians. There have been various studies describing the prevalence rates of musculoskeletal pain among various strata of people, but limited study are in existence which supports the use of alternative therapies other than pharmacological treatment in reduction of musculoskeletal pain. Literature search from the previous existence studies were analysed, key words and specific search terms in relation to the study was searched. Few of the terms were “hot water bag application”, “heat application”, “thermotherapies”, “cryotherapy” was searched. The search was done in the following database like PubMed, ProQuest, Google Scholar and Copernicus.A man cannot function to his fullest when in pain. Thus at most care needs to be taken to relieve each human being in pain. This area of research needs more of research to be taken as this poses a very huge impact on the society.
