European journal of pain : EJP
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Pain therapy in inpatients is regularly suboptimal and might be improved by clinical pharmacy services. In our hospital, we have implemented a software-supported 'Check of Medication Appropriateness' (CMA), which is a centralized pharmacist-led service consisting of a clinical rule-based screening for potentially inappropriate prescriptions (PIPs), and a subsequent medication review by pharmacists. We aimed to investigate the impact of the CMA on pain-related prescribing. ⋯ Prescribing of analgesics should be improved in inpatients to optimize pain control and to reduce iatrogenic harm. The Check of Medication Appropriateness (CMA) approach, comprising a clinical rule-based screening for patients at risk and a targeted medication review by pharmacists, reduced the number of pain-related potentially inappropriate prescriptions in a highly significant and sustained manner. This study presents the opportunities of a centralized clinical pharmacy service to help clinicians to further improve analgesic prescribing.
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Facial activity during pain is composed of varying combinations of a few elementary facial responses (so-called Action Units). A previous study of experimental pain showed that these varying combinations can be clustered into distinct facial activity patterns of pain. In the present study, we examined whether comparable facial activity patterns can also be identified among people suffering from clinical pain; namely, shoulder pain. ⋯ Similar to experimental pain, facial activity during evoked pain episodes in shoulder pain patients could be clustered into distinct faces of pain. Each cluster was composed of different combinations of single facial responses, namely: narrowed eyes, which is displayed either alone or in combination with opened mouth or wrinkled nose, or furrowed brows and closed eyes. These distinct faces of pain may inform the training of professionals and computers how to best recognize pain based on facial expressions.
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Observational Study
Sensory and pain modulation profiles of ongoing central neuropathic extremity pain in multiple sclerosis.
Central neuropathic extremity pain (CNEP) is the most frequent type of pain in multiple sclerosis (MS). The aim of the present study was to evaluate sensory and pain modulation profiles in MS patients with CNEP. ⋯ This article presents higher prevalence of the 'sensory loss' prototypic sensory phenotype in multiple sclerosis patients with central extremity neuropathic pain compared to pain-free patients. Higher degree of disability underlines the possible role of higher lesion load in the somatosensory pathways in this particular 'deafferentation' type of central neuropathic pain.
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Fibromyalgia is characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain and often accompanied by cognitive and emotional problems. Adaptation to fibromyalgia may therefore also rely on one's ability to regulate emotional problems. In this study, we examined two indices of emotion regulation, that is, (a) affective instability, involving frequent large fluctuations in self-reported affect, and (b) resting heart rate variability (HRV). ⋯ This study provides novel insight in the link between emotion regulation indices,that is, heart-rate variability and negative affective (NA) instability, in patients with fibromyalgia, and presents evidence for differences in both emotion regulation indices between patients with fibromyalgia and healthy people. Furthermore, results link increased NA instability with increased levels of daily disability in patients with fibromyalgia. Together, these findings offer support for a key role of emotion regulation in fibromyalgia outcomes, providing pathways for clinical practice.
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Increased acute postoperative pain intensity has been associated with the development of persistent postsurgical pain (PPP) in mechanistic and clinical investigations, but it remains unclear which aspects of acute pain explain this linkage. ⋯ Symbolic aggregate approximations of clinically obtained, acute postoperative pain intraday time series identify different motifs in patients suffering moderate to severe pain 6 months after surgery.