Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2024
ReviewSkeletal muscle relaxant for the treatment of fibromyalgia: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
Fibromyalgia is a complex chronic pain disorder that significantly impairs patient well-being. Evaluating the efficacy of muscle relaxants for treating fibromyalgia is crucial for improving patient care. ⋯ Moderate quality evidence showed that muscle relaxants were associated with a small reduction in pain intensity for patients with fibromyalgia.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2024
ReviewNeuraxial pathology and regional anesthesia: an education guide to decision-making.
In current clinical practice, spinal anesthesia and analgesia techniques-including epidural and subarachnoid procedures-are frequently executed without imaging like X-ray or epidurography. Unrecognized spinal pathology has resulted in serious morbidity in the context of performing neuraxial anesthesia. Typically, preoperative consultations incorporate a patient's medical history but lack a detailed spinal examination or consideration of recent MRI or CT scans. ⋯ Such collaborative settings rely on exhaustive clinical history and scrutinization of recent imaging studies, which may influence the decision to proceed with invasive spinal interventions. There are no epidemiological data concerning rates of the different baseline pathologies that would potentially pose morbidity risks from neuraxial procedures, but the most common among these is canal stenosis, which significantly affects almost 20% of people over 60 years of age. This paper aims to elucidate these critical findings and advocate for incorporating meticulous preoperative assessments for individuals slated for spinal anesthesia or analgesia procedures, thereby attempting to mitigate potential risks.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2024
ReviewAddition of dexamethasone to prolong peripheral nerve blocks: a ChatGPT-created narrative review.
Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), an artificial intelligence chatbot, produces detailed responses and human-like coherent answers, and has been used in the clinical and academic medicine. To evaluate its accuracy in regional anesthesia topics, we produced a ChatGPT review on the addition of dexamethasone to prolong peripheral nerve blocks. ⋯ Major concerns raised by the authors included the poor search methodology, poor organization/lack of flow, inaccuracies/omissions of text or references, and lack of novelty. At this time, we do not believe ChatGPT is able to replace human experts and is extremely limited in providing original, creative solutions/ideas and interpreting data for a subspecialty medical review article.