Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2011
Multicenter StudyPrescription sharing, alcohol use, and street drug use to manage pain among veterans.
Efforts to promote awareness and management of chronic pain have been accompanied by a troubling increase in prescription medication abuse. At the same time, some patients may misuse substances in an effort to manage chronic pain. ⋯ Veterans with a history of SUDs, greater pain interference, more nonpain symptoms, and mental health concerns should be carefully managed to deter substance misuse for pain management.
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Knowledge about factors influencing the place of death may be very useful for the planning of public health strategies to improve the situation of terminally ill patients. ⋯ Compared with other European countries, home death is still a frequent event in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Regional health policy should consider the actual distribution of place of death and corresponding predicting factors when establishing specialized palliative care home services as designed by recent German health legislation.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2011
Review Meta AnalysisEffectiveness of knowledge translation interventions to improve cancer pain management.
Cancer pain is prevalent, yet patients do not receive best care despite widely available evidence. Although national cancer control policies call for education, effectiveness of such programs is unclear and best practices are not well defined. ⋯ Trials that used a higher dose of KT intervention (characterized by extensive follow-up, comprehensive educational program, and higher resource allocation) were significantly more likely to have positive results than trials that did not use this approach. Further attention to methodological issues to improve educational interventions and research to clarify factors that lead to better pain control are urgently needed.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2011
Association between self-reported sleep disturbance and other symptoms in patients with advanced cancer.
Sleep disturbance (SD) is a significant source of distress for patients with cancer. Studies of patients with advanced cancer receiving palliative care to identify symptoms associated with the severity of SD are limited. ⋯ SD is associated with increased frequency of pain, depression, anxiety, and a worse sense of well-being. These four symptoms should be assessed in all patients with advanced cancer with a complaint of SD. The ideal cutoff point of the ESAS-Sleep item for screening for SD is a score of ≥ 3. More research is needed to better characterize this frequent and distressing syndrome.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2011
Hospital versus home death: results from the Mexican Health and Aging Study.
Characterizing where people die is needed to inform palliative care programs in Mexico. ⋯ Older Mexicans with access to health care services were more likely to die in the hospital even after controlling for important clinical and demographic characteristics. Findings from the study may be used to plan the provision of accessible end-of-life hospital and home-based services.