European journal of pain : EJP
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Pain is a commonly reported symptom following surgery that is more likely to occur in individuals psychologically distressed prior to surgery. Monitoring processing style, a cognitive tendency to focus on health-related threats, has been associated with increased reporting of somatic symptoms, but no studies have specifically addressed the link between this cognitive style and pain. This prospective clinical study aimed to investigate whether monitoring processing style predicted post-surgical pain in women undergoing breast surgery, controlling for pre-surgical psychological distress. ⋯ Pre-surgical monitoring processing style was an independent predictor of post-surgical neuropathic pain, even when accounting for pre-surgical psychological distress. Since the reduction of post-surgical pain is a key goal of healthcare, efforts should be made prior to breast cancer surgery to counsel and support individuals with high monitoring processing styles irrespective of their level of distress.
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This study aims to determine whether older adults reporting back pain (BP) are at increased risk of premature mortality, specifically, to examine the association with disabling/non-disabling pain separately. ⋯ This study confirmed previous findings regarding the relationship between pain and excess mortality. Further, we have shown that, among older adults, this association is specific to disabling pain and to women. Clinicians should be aware not only of the short-term implications of disabling BP but also the longer-term effects. Future research should attempt to understand the mechanisms underpinning this relationship to avoid excess mortality and should aim to determine why the relationship differs in men and women.
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It has been suggested that fibromyalgia (FM) patients show increased sensory processing of nociceptive and non-nociceptive stimuli and also reduced habituation. Although this pattern of increased reactivity has been established for the somatosensory modality, its generalization to other sensory modalities remains controversial. ⋯ The results indicate that FM patients do not present significant deficits in early sensory gating when processing auditory stimuli, and therefore challenge the 'generalized hypersensitivity' hypothesis of FM.