The Clinical journal of pain
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Pain is a complex common health problem, with important implications for quality of life and with huge economic consequences. Pain can be elicited due to tissue damage, as well as other multiple factors such as inflammation and oxidative stress. Can there be 1 therapeutic pathway that may target multiple etiologic factors in pain? ⋯ In this article, we show evidence for the relationships between vagal nerve activity and pain, and between vagal nerve activity and 5 factors that are etiologic to pain. Given the evidence and effects of the vagus nerve activation in pain, people involved in pain therapy may need to seriously consider activation of this nerve.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Low Back Pain Patient Subgroups in Primary Care - Pain Characteristics, Psychosocial Determinants and Health Care Utilization.
In industrialized countries, low back pain (LBP) is one of the leading causes for prolonged sick leave, early retirement, and high health care costs. Providing the same treatments to all patients is neither effective nor feasible, and may impede patients' recovery. Recent studies have outlined the need for subgroup-specific treatment allocation. ⋯ Our study adds substantially to the knowledge of LBP-related case-mix in primary care. Information on differential health care needs may be inferred from our study, enabling decision makers to allocate resources more appropriately and to reduce costs.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Cognitive Mediators of Treatment Outcomes in Pediatric Functional Abdominal Pain.
Cognitive-behavioral (CB) interventions improve outcomes for many pediatric health conditions, but little is known about which mechanisms mediate these outcomes. The goal of this study was to identify whether changes in targeted process variables from baseline to 1 week posttreatment mediate improvement in outcomes in a randomized controlled trial of a brief CB intervention for idiopathic childhood abdominal pain. ⋯ Results suggest that reductions in reports of children's pain and GI symptoms after a social learning and CB intervention were mediated at least in part by decreasing maladaptive parent and child cognitions.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of Average Weekly Pain Using Recalled Paper and Momentary Assessment Electronic Diary Reports in Children with Arthritis.
The current study investigated the construct validity of a multidimensional pain diary for youth with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and also compared participants' responses on electronic and retrospective diary measures. The purpose of the latter part of this study was to compare absolute agreement, between-person and within-person consistency and judged change in weekly pain between these 2 methods of assessing pain. ⋯ This is one of the few studies to explore the relationship between the measurement methods of pain recall and momentary assessment in adolescents. The poor within-person correlations observed have important implications for research design and practice in pediatric pain.
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Identifying mechanisms that mediate recovery is imperative to improve outcomes in low back pain (LBP). Qualitative studies suggest that guilt may be such a mechanism, but research on this concept is scarce, and reliable instruments to measure pain-related guilt are not available. ⋯ The findings suggest that pain-related guilt is common and is associated with clinical outcomes. Prospective research is needed to examine the role of guilt as a predictor, moderator, and mediator of patients' outcomes.