The Clinical journal of pain
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The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) is a highly recommended and frequently used multidimensional pain assessment tool. The BPI includes 2 dimensions: pain intensity and pain's interference with functions. Our aims were to explore how patients respond to pain interference items by comparing responses from patients who had cancer with patients who had noncancer chronic pain (NCCP), and to explore how different levels of health-related quality of life affect upon pain's interference with functions. ⋯ The results indicate that patients are unable to report isolated pain's interference using the BPI. When reporting pain's interference with physical functioning, the level of physical functioning is more important than the level of pain. Patients' diagnoses have to be taken into account when interpreting reported pain's interference with functions.
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The evaluation of tenderness associated with greater trochanteric pain (GTP) syndrome is amenable to bias and depends on the examiner's experience. In this study, we tested whether the use of an electronic pressure algometer enhanced the reliability of this evaluation. ⋯ The examination of tenderness associated with GTP is facilitated by the used algometer. It is the intraindividual body-side PPT differences that yield the most sensitive measurement for the assessment of deep pain. A cut-off value of 0.8 can be used for diagnostic purposes. Interindividual differences might be considerable and could mask pathologic diagnostic findings.
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There is little agreement about a differential response of men and women to opioid analgesics. Some experimental and clinical studies have shown that women have a better response to opioids, others have found no difference, and still others have found opioids to be more effective analgesics for men than women. ⋯ Men and women presenting to the Emergency Department did not have a differential response to a single weight-based dose of morphine for alleviation of acute pain. Women without baseline nausea had more adverse events than men.
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Clinical Trial
Decision analysis for epidural labor analgesia with Multiattribute Utility (MAU) model.
Epidural analgesia (EA) is an effective and safe method to relieve labor pain. Little is known about the factors associated with decision on EA. We applied Multiattribute Utility (MAU) theory to ascertain possible factors on which we based to predict whether parturients would receive EA or not (non-EA) during their labor. ⋯ These findings suggest that our MAU model can predict pre-labor decision and final decision of parturients by the incorporation of correlates with respect to knowledge and attitude.
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To explore the prevalence of orofacial pain (OFP) among patients with vulvar vestibulitis syndrome (VVS) and to examine the relationship between signs and symptoms of OFP and clinical characteristics of women with VVS, we investigated differences in psychologic characteristics and severity of painful intercourse. ⋯ OFP is a common condition among women with VVS. Because severity and duration of painful intercourse did not differ by OFP classification but psychologic characteristics did, we must begin to question a unidimensional focus on vestibular mucosa as a reason for pain and persistent distress.