Anesthesiology and pain medicine
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Review
Interventional Therapies for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Focused Review (Efficacy and Outcomes).
Lower back pain is considered to be one of the most common complaints that brings a patient to a pain specialist. Several modalities in interventional pain management are known to be helpful to a patient with chronic low back pain. Proper diagnosis is required for appropriate intervention to provide optimal benefits. From simple trigger point injections for muscular pain to a highly complex intervention such as a spinal cord stimulator are very effective if chosen properly. The aim of this article is to provide the reader with a comprehensive reading for treatment of lower back pain using interventional modalities. ⋯ Lower back pain is a major healthcare issue and this review article will help educate the pain practitioners about the current evidence based treatment options.
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Because blood pressure and heart rate (HR) elevations during tracheal extubation are common, different medications have been studied to prevent such complications. ⋯ Both remifentanil and magnesium had favorable outcomes in preventing HR and MAP elevation after tracheal extubation. However, remifentanil was associated with more rapid regaining of consciousness and reversal of muscular relaxation.
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The use of printed or electronic checklists and other cognitive aids has gained increasing interest from anesthesia providers and professional societies. While these aids are not currently considered standard of care, the perceptions of the clinician might have an impact on their adoption. ⋯ Providers at our large academic institution generally embrace the concept of checklists and other cognitive aids. This was true for all providers for checklists for procedural time outs, anesthesia crisis situations and those for routine procedures that providers rarely perform. Only very experienced and very junior providers appreciated the use of checklists for routine care. There remains a discrepancy between these claims and provider's perception on their clinical competency based on memory alone.
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Pregabalin is commonly used to treat patients with various neuropathic pain syndromes. ⋯ The present data do not suggest that pregabalin is more efficacious than placebo in the treatment of lumbar and cervical radicular pain. However, the small sample size of this study may have affected the ability to detect such a difference.