Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) is highly prevalent in pain medicine, yet there is no "gold standard" or set of validated diagnostic criteria for clinical or research use. A survey collected clinician perspectives on MPS to foster the development of a formal case definition for empirical validation. ⋯ These results were used to propose a set of preliminary diagnostic criteria; expert consensus for case definition and subsequent empirical validation are required for standardization in research and clinical management of MPS.
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Consensus indicates that a comprehensive,multimodal, holistic approach is foundational to the practice of acute pain medicine (APM),but lack of uniform, evidence-based clinical pathways leads to undesirable variability throughout U. S. healthcare systems. Acute pain studies are inconsistently synthesized to guide educational programs. Advanced practice techniques involving regional anesthesia assume the presence of a physician-led, multidisciplinary acute pain service,which is often unavailable or inconsistently applied.This heterogeneity of educational and organizational standards may result in unnecessary patient pain and escalation of healthcare costs. ⋯ This report is the first step in a 3-year initiative aimed at creating conditions and incentives for the optimal provision of APM services to facilitate and enhance the quality of patient recovery after surgery, illness, or trauma. The ultimate goal is to reduce the conversion of acute pain to the debilitating disease of chronic pain.
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To provide additional empirical findings regarding the number of pain ratings needed to obtain valid measures for assessing outcomes in pain clinical trials. ⋯ Composite pain intensity scores created from two individual ratings of recalled pain appear to be adequately valid for detecting treatment effects. Moreover, the findings indicate that the selection of the pain intensity domain to use as a primary outcome variable may play a more important role than increasing reliability by obtaining more assessments; specifically, ratings of recalled worst pain may be more valid for detecting treatment effects than ratings of average pain.
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Self-determination theory (SDT) may be a useful framework to understand why chronic pain affects partners. SDT postulates that individuals can engage in helping behaviors for different motives varying from more autonomous or volitional motives to more controlled or pressured motives. This article examines the relationship between partners' type of motivation to help (i.e., autonomous vs controlled) and their personal and relational functioning. Furthermore, mechanisms underlying this relationship (i.e., helping exhaustion and relationship-based need satisfaction) were examined. ⋯ Applying SDT in a context of pain provides new insights into why chronic pain affects partners and how partners impact patient outcome. Directions for future research are outlined.
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To establish a new animal model for the study of neuropathic pain developed by administration of cobra venom to the brachial plexus (BP) lower trunk. ⋯ The cobra venom model can be used as a model to induce neuropathic pain and to enable study of the mechanism and treatment.