Pain
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Multicenter Study
Psychological, surgical and sociodemographic predictors of pain outcomes after breast cancer surgery: a population-based cohort study.
Chronic postsurgical pain (CPSP) is a common postoperative adverse event affecting up to half of women undergoing breast cancer surgery, yet few epidemiological studies have prospectively investigated the role of preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative risk factors for pain onset and chronicity. We prospectively investigated preoperative sociodemographic and psychological factors, intraoperative clinical factors, and acute postoperative pain in a prospective cohort of 362 women undergoing surgery for primary breast cancer. Intraoperative nerve handling (division or preservation) of the intercostobrachial nerve was recorded. ⋯ At 9months, younger age, axillary node clearance (OR 2.97, 95% CI 1.09 to 8.06), and severity of acute postoperative pain (OR 1.17, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.37) were predictive of pain persistence. Of those with CPSP, 25% experienced moderate to severe pain and 40% were positive on Douleur Neuropathique 4 and Self-Complete Leeds Assessment of Neuropathic Symptoms and Signs pain scales. Overall, a high proportion of women report painful symptoms, altered sensations, and numbness in the upper body within the first 9months after resectional breast surgery and cancer treatment.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The role of executive functioning in children's attentional pain control: An experimental analysis.
Directing attention away from pain is often used in children's pain treatment programs to control pain. However, empirical evidence concerning its effectiveness is inconclusive. We therefore sought to understand other influencing factors, including executive function and its role in the pain experience. ⋯ Our findings suggest that distraction as a process for managing pain is complex. While it appears that executive function may play a role in adult distraction, in this study it did not direct attention away from pain. It may instead be involved in the overall pain experience.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Increasing optimism abolishes pain-induced impairments in executive task performance.
Coping with the demands of pain diminishes self-regulatory capacity and causes self-regulatory fatigue, which then leads to deteriorated executive task performance. It has been suggested that optimism can counteract the depletion of self-regulatory capacity. ⋯ Results indicated that although pain led to significantly worse performance on the executive functioning task in the no optimism condition, this sustained deteriorating effect of pain on task performance was abolished in the optimism condition. This finding is imperative because it suggests that optimism may be an important factor to implement in current psychological treatment approaches to diminish the negative impact of chronic pain on the ability to function in daily life.
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The unpredictable efficacy of current therapies for neuropathic pain may reflect diverse etiological mechanisms operating between, and within, diseases. As descriptions of pain rarely establish specific mechanisms, a tool that can identify underlying causes of neuropathic pain would be useful in developing patient-specific treatments. Rate-dependent depression (RDD), a measure of the change in amplitude of the Hoffman reflex over consecutive stimulations, is attenuated in diabetic rats that also exhibit impaired spinal γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)A receptor function, reduced spinal potassium chloride co-transporter (KCC2) expression, and indices of painful neuropathy. ⋯ Treating diabetic rats with TrkB/Fc restored RDD and alleviated indices of painful neuropathy. In paclitaxel-treated rats, RDD was not impaired and behavioral indices of neuropathic pain were not associated with spinal GABAergic dysfunction or reduced dorsal spinal KCC2 expression. Our data reveal BDNF as part of the mechanism underlying spinal cord disinhibition caused by altered GABAA receptor function in diabetic rats and suggest that RDD deficits may be a useful indicator of neuropathic pain states associated with spinal disinhibition, thereby revealing specific therapeutic targets.