Pain research & management : the journal of the Canadian Pain Society = journal de la société canadienne pour le traitement de la douleur
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Tough guys or sensitive guys? Disentangling the role of examiner sex on patient pain reports.
Experimental and clinical pain studies are conflicting regarding whether individuals report heightened or dampened pain sensitivity in the presence of other men or women. ⋯ These preliminary findings warrant larger-scale investigations of social contextual influences on patient pain reports, which are necessary for creating more standardized protocols for reliably assessing and treating patient pain experiences.
-
Comparative Study
Patient versus parental perceptions about pain and disability in children and adolescents with a variety of chronic pain conditions.
Cross-informant variance is often observed in patient self-reports versus parent proxy reports of pediatric chronic pain and disability. ⋯ While equal merit should ideally be given to pediatric chronic pain patients' self-reports and their parents' proxy reports of pain intensity and disability, it would appear that, as needed, pediatric patients or parents can offer a clinically valid, single clinical perspective.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
The influence of communicative relations on facial responses to pain: does it matter who is watching?
Facial responses to pain are believed to be an act of communication and, as such, are likely to be affected by the relationship between sender and receiver. ⋯ Variations in communicative relations had no effect on the elements of the facial pain language. The degree of facial expressiveness, however, was adapted to the relationship between sender and observer. Individuals suppressed their facial communication of pain toward unfamiliar persons, whereas they overtly displayed it in the presence of an intimate other. Furthermore, when confronted with an unfamiliar person, different situational demands appeared to apply for both sexes.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Impaired modulation of pain in patients with postherpetic neuralgia.
The efficiency of inhibitory pain descending pathways (evaluated using conditioned pain modulation [CPM]) has not been studied in postherpetic neuralgia (PHN). ⋯ Psychophysical and electrophysiological approaches have shown that patients with PHN exhibit a deficiency of pain inhibition modulation, which could signal a predisposing factor to developing chronic pain. This deficiency was not linked to the cognitive performance but rather to subtle in situ cognitivoemotional adaptations, which remain to be investigated.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Laboratory personnel gender and cold pressor apparatus affect subjective pain reports.
There is no standardized method for cold pressor pain tasks across experiments. Temperature, apparatus and aspects of experimenters vary widely among studies. It is well known that experimental pain tolerance is influenced by setting as well as the sex of the experimenter. It is not known whether other contextual factors influence experimental pain reporting. ⋯ More standardized protocols for measuring pain across varying research and clinical settings should be developed.