• J Fam Pract · Aug 1987

    Antidepressants and chronic pain.

    • J D Stauffer.
    • J Fam Pract. 1987 Aug 1; 25 (2): 167-70.

    AbstractSuccessful treatment of pain syndromes is one of the most common and most difficult problems facing family physicians. Frequently analgesics provide inadequate treatment, and clinicians are forced to consider alternatives. This article reviews the neurophysiologic similarities between depression and the chronic pain syndromes and describes several well-designed double-blinded studies that give evidence for the efficacy of antidepressants in chronic pain syndromes. These studies conclude that antidepressants should be considered in chronic pain syndromes that do not respond to analgesics. For chronic pain, antidepressants should be started at a low dosage and increased in a stepwise manner until an improvement in the pain occurs or intolerable side effects intervene. Side effects are a bothersome aspect of antidepressant therapy but are more tolerable at the doses generally needed for pain relief than at antidepressive doses. At least three weeks of antidepressant therapy is generally needed to gain significant relief of symptoms.

      Pubmed     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…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.