European journal of pain : EJP
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Acupuncture analgesia for temporal summation of experimental pain: a randomised controlled study.
Temporal summation of pain, a phenomenon of the central nervous system (CNS), represents enhanced painful sensation or reduced pain threshold upon repeated stimulation. This pain model has been used to evaluate the analgesic effect of various medications on the CNS. ⋯ EA induces bilateral, segmentally distributed and prolong analgesia on both SPT and TST, indicating a non-centrally specific effect. This effect needs to be verified with heat or mechanical model and in pain patients.
-
Withdrawal from analgesic and addictive substances such as opioids or ethanol is associated with increased sensitivity to sensory stimulation in animal models. Here, we investigated perception of innocuous and noxious thermal or electric stimuli applied to the left hand or sternum in 30 male patients undergoing withdrawal from alcohol, 30 male abstained alcoholics and matched controls. The alcohol withdrawal scale and the Banger score were obtained to estimate the severity of withdrawal. ⋯ No differences were found between patients of the abstained group and control subjects for any pain parameter. In conclusion, we demonstrate withdrawal-induced hyperalgesia upon thermal stimulation in patients. Since the influence of affective symptoms on pain perception during withdrawal is remarkable, we assume that peripheral and central mechanisms might account for this finding, which should be assessed in detail in future studies.
-
Multicenter Study
Influence of risk of neurological impairment and procedure invasiveness on health professionals' management of procedural pain in neonates.
To describe how (i) risk of neurological impairment (NI) and (ii) procedure invasiveness influence health professionals' assessment and management of procedural pain in neonates in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). ⋯ Health professionals use multidimensional indicators to assess neonatal pain. Nonpharmacological interventions dominate pain management. NI risk status and procedure invasiveness are important contextual factors in neonatal pain assessment and management.
-
Recurrent pain not only has an impact on disability, but on the long term it may become a threat to one's sense of self. This paper presents a cross-sectional study of patients with work-related upper extremity pain and focuses on: (1) the role of self-discrepancies in this group, (2) the associations between self-discrepancies, pain, emotions and (3) the interaction between self-discrepancies and flexible-goal adjustment. Eighty-nine participants completed standardized self-report measures of pain intensity, pain duration, anxiety, depression and flexible-goal adjustment. ⋯ Furthermore, significant interactions were found between actual-ought other self-discrepancies and flexibility, indicating that less flexible participants with large self-discrepancies score higher on depression. This study showed that self-discrepancies are related to negative emotions and that flexible-goal adjustment served as a moderator in this relationship. The view of self in pain and flexible-goal adjustment should be considered as important variables in the process of chronic pain.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Effects of pain management on sleep in preterm infants.
This study was conducted to gain better understanding of the prolonged effects of pain and pain management on preterm infants' sleep. ⋯ Pain management with oxycodone markedly altered the structure of the subsequent sleep period. This reduced amount of REM sleep may have consequences for brain development in preterm infants.