• Eur J Pain · Apr 2016

    Randomized Controlled Trial

    Watching your pain site reduces pain intensity in chronic back pain patients.

    • M Diers, A Löffler, W Zieglgänsberger, and J Trojan.
    • Department of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Central Institute of Mental Health/Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
    • Eur J Pain. 2016 Apr 1; 20 (4): 581-5.

    BackgroundChronic back pain (CBP) is a frequent debilitating and often treatment-resistant disorder. The awareness of one's own body seems to be essential in pain reduction through visual input. Visual feedback of the back reduces experimental pain perception in CBP at this site and watching the back during repeated lumbar spine movements reduces movement-evoked pain. In this study, we tested whether visual feedback alone can reduce habitual pain in CBP.MethodsIn a within-subject design, 19 CBP patients participated in an online visual feedback condition, watching one's own back. This was compared to several control conditions, such as watching a neutral object (book), a video of another person of the same sex, a picture of the own back, and keeping one's eyes closed in randomized order on five separate days. In each experimental session, participants rated habitual pain intensity and unpleasantness before and after the experimental manipulation.ResultsWe present evidence that visual feedback by watching the site of chronic pain on a video screen alone is sufficient to reduce habitual chronic pain. No additional manipulation or movement was necessary.ConclusionsThese results suggest that online video feedback may be helpful in alleviating chronic pain.© 2015 European Pain Federation - EFIC®

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…