The Clinical journal of pain
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To review qualitative, empirical studies exploring the influence of patients' and primary care practitioners' beliefs and expectations on the process of care for chronic musculoskeletal pain. ⋯ To tackle the challenges and conflicts identified within the review, change may have to occur, not just in individual patient and practitioner beliefs and behavior, but also at an organizational and system level, for example, changes in undergraduate and postgraduate education and changes in the organization and availability of health services.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Myofascial trigger points are very prevalent in patients with chronic tension-type headache: a double-blinded controlled study.
Myofascial pain syndromes due to trigger points (TrPs) are clinical entities, but more evidence is needed to evaluate TrP palpation. Chronic tension-type headache (CTTH) is the most prevalent chronic headache with high socioeconomic costs. The primary aim was to study whether TrP palpation can distinguish patients with headache patients from healthy controls. ⋯ These findings suggest that active TrPs are much more frequent in CTTH than in controls and the number and pain intensity of TrPs may be used to distinguish between the 2 groups. Spontaneous electromyographic activity could not be demonstrated, and the underlying biology of TrPs is still unclear.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of mild water-filtered near infrared whole-body hyperthermia as an adjunct to a standard multimodal rehabilitation in the treatment of fibromyalgia.
To evaluate whether mild water-filtered near infrared whole-body hyperthermia (NI-WBH) produces an additional benefit when applied as an adjunct to a standard multimodal rehabilitation (MR) compared with MR only in patients with fibromyalgia (FM). ⋯ The study indicates that NI-WBH is a worthwhile adjunct to MR in the treatment of FM.
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This study investigated whether anxiety, fear of pain, or pain catastrophizing were predictive of pain-related outcomes after induced delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) at the shoulder. ⋯ With the exception of muscle force production, fear of pain had a consistent influence on shoulder DOMS outcomes, even after controlling for pain intensity. This study suggests fear of pain may be a relevant psychologic factor to consider in clinical studies investigating the development and treatment of chronic shoulder pain.
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This study explores the fear-avoidance model in a sample of women with neck-shoulder pain related to computer work who were still functioning at the workplace. Exploring this model in this population could produce starting points for new treatment approaches in occupational health. ⋯ In line with the fear-avoidance model, the current results addressed the importance of pain-related fear in people with neck-shoulder pain disability related to computer work. Interestingly, and not in accordance with the fear-avoidance model, fear-avoidance beliefs directly influence disability levels in the current sample; regardless of lower levels of performance that is, physical impairment.