Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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The dorsal root ganglion (DRG), in the not too distant past, had been thought of as a passive organ not involved in the development of abnormal aberrent neuropathic pain (NP), but merely metabolically "supporting" physiologic functions between the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the central nervous system (CNS). New information regarding metabolic change within the DRG has dispelled this supportive passive role and suggests that the DRG is an active, not a passive, organ, in the process of the development of chronic pain. ⋯ The DRG is as involved in the process of generating NP as is the nociceptor and the dorsal horn of the spinal cord.
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Older patients with back pain are more likely to visit their general practitioner (GP) and are more likely to be prescribed analgesics. ⋯ In these older adults consulting their GP with back pain, 72% used analgesics at baseline. Despite a decrease in medication use during follow-up, at 3 and 6 months a considerable proportion still used analgesics.
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This study was conducted to translate the Pain Catastrophizing Scale into and adapt it to the Sinhala language and to examine its psychometric properties and factor structure in pain patients and healthy adults in Sri Lanka. ⋯ The results suggest that the Sinhala version of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale retains the original three-factor structure. It is a stable, valid and sufficiently reliable tool to assess pain catastrophizing in Sinhala-speaking individuals in Sri Lanka.
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This study aims to investigate the presence of bilateral pressure pain hypersensitivity in arm trunk nerves and upper limb mechanosensitivity in breast cancer patients with neck-shoulder pain after medical treatments. ⋯ Breast cancer survivors present bilateral and widespread neural hypersensitivity, as they did in muscular tissue in previous studies. Breast cancer survivors demonstrate a reduction in ROM during ULNTs in the affected side.
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Emergency department (ED) visits for opioid overdose provide an important marker of acute morbidity. We sought to evaluate national trends of ED visits for opioid overdose. ⋯ In a nationally representative database of U.S. ED visits, we found that the ED visit rate for opioid overdose quadrupled from 1993 to 2010. Our findings suggest that previous prevention measures may not be adequate.