Clinical rheumatology
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Persistent pain represents a major quality-of-life burden for patients and a challenge for their physician. Chronic pain often arises from multiple tissue sources and involves multiple chemical mediators and pain transmission pathways. Successful long-term pain management requires analgesic regimens that can treat pains of multiple origin and type. ⋯ Rational combinations of analgesic drugs offer a viable approach to managing persistent pain that involves multiple sites or pathways. The combination of paracetamol plus tramadol brings together two well-known analgesics that have different but complementary mechanisms of analgesic action. Laboratory studies have demonstrated that these agents interact to produce synergistic analgesia with a desirable safety/efficacy profile.
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Clinical rheumatology · Jan 2006
ReviewUpdate on guidelines for the treatment of chronic musculoskeletal pain.
Chronic musculoskeletal pain is a major - and growing - burden on today's ageing populations. Professional organisations including the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), American Pain Society (APS) and European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) have published treatment guidelines within the past 5 years to assist clinicians achieve effective pain management. Safety is a core concern in all these guidelines, especially for chronic conditions such as osteoarthritis that require long-term treatment. ⋯ There are as yet no updated official guidelines that incorporate these new data and regulatory advice. An international multidisciplinary panel, the Working Group on Pain Management, has generated new recommendations for the treatment of moderate-to-severe musculoskeletal pain. These guidelines, formulated in response to recent developments concerning COX-2 inhibitors and other NSAIDs, focus on paracetamol as the baseline drug for chronic pain management; when greater analgesia is desired, the addition of weak opioids is recommended based on a preferable GI and cardiovascular profile, compared with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
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Clinical rheumatology · Nov 2005
Fibromyalgia and headache: an epidemiological study supporting migraine as part of the fibromyalgia syndrome.
Fibromyalgia is defined by widespread body pain, tenderness to palpation of tender point areas, and constitutional symptoms. The literature reports headache in about half of fibromyalgia patients. The current epidemiological study was designed to determine the prevalence and characteristics of headache in fibromyalgia patients. ⋯ General measures of pain, pain-related disability, sleep quality, and psychological distress were similar in fibromyalgia patients with and without headache. Therefore, fibromyalgia patients with headache do not appear to represent a significantly different subgroup compared to fibromyalgia patients without headache. The high prevalence and significant impact associated with chronic headache in fibromyalgia patients, however, warrants inclusion of a headache assessment as part of the routine evaluation of fibromyalgia patients.
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Clinical rheumatology · Nov 2005
Letter Case ReportsSplenic infarction in a pregnant woman with systemic lupus erythematosus.
Here we describe a 20-year-old pregnant woman with systemic lupus erythematosus who had high anticardiolipin antibodies and presented with splenic infarction.
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Clinical rheumatology · Nov 2005
Case ReportsMagnetic resonance imaging findings in a case of remitting seronegative symmetrical synovitis with pitting edema.
We describe a case of remitting seronegative symmetrical synovitis with pitting edema (RS3PE syndrome) in a 66-year-old man. This report discusses magnetic resonance imaging findings of RS3PE syndrome and the changes after steroid therapy.