Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
The Preventive Value of Epidural Calcitonin in Patients with Lower Limb Amputation.
Postamputation pain is highly prevalent after limb amputation with neuropathic nature; calcitonin may effectively relieve many neuropathic pain states. ⋯ The preventive use of epidural calcitonin improved the grade of phantom pain and reduced the incidence of allodynia and hyperalgesia in patients undergoing lower limb amputation under combined spinal-epidural anesthesia during one year of follow-up.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Pain Treatments for Nursing Home Residents with Advanced Dementia and Substantial Impaired Communication: A Cross-Sectional Analysis at Baseline of a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial.
This is a cross-sectional analysis at baseline of a cluster randomized controlled trial to identify factors associated with the use of pharmacological and nonpharmacological pain treatments by nursing home residents with dementia and impaired communication. ⋯ Suboptimal pain management was common among this population. Severe impairment in the ability to communicate is a major reason for the underuse of pain medications. Staff may become desensitized and fail to perceive subtle changes in the residents' behavior as indicative of pain, leading to the underadministering of nonpharmacological treatments. To improve this situation, it is suggested that observational pain assessments be systematically carried out in nursing homes.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Conventional (Simplicity III) and Cooled (SInergy) Radiofrequency for Sacroiliac Joint Denervation: One-Year Retrospective Study Comparing Two Devices.
To compare two radiofrequency (RF) devices, Simplicity III (conventional RF), and SInergy (cooled RF), which are specifically designed to denervate the sacroiliac joint (SIJ). ⋯ The study results suggest that SInergy safely afforded patients with greater and more durable analgesia and disability relief than Simplicity III for SIJ-derived pain. The Simplicity III procedure may be more conducive than SInergy for bilateral procedures and for patients who have limited tolerance to be in an RF procedure-required prone position. Randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm the implication made in this study that SInergy is the preferred RF denervation option for treating SIJ-derived pain and the disability associated with it.
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The goals of the present study were (a) to assess the psychological treatment needs and treatment delivery preferences in people attending services or contacting a hospital website for chronic pain in Singapore, and (b) to explore potential relevance of the psychological flexibility (PF) model for this group by investigating associations between PF and pain-related outcomes. ⋯ A focus on meeting patients' needs at low cost, and providing proof of treatment success may increase psychological treatment uptake. Increasing PF for pain in people from Singapore may also contribute to better patient functioning.
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The pathophysiology of fibromyalgia has been related to central pain sensitization. This study tested a laboratory protocol evaluating responses to slowly repeated evoked pain stimuli (SREP) that may index central pain sensitization in fibromyalgia. ⋯ A protocol employing a single series of nine low-suprathreshold-intensity slowly repeated pain stimuli elicits increased perceived pain in fibromyalgia patients, consistent with central sensitization despite relatively long interstimulus intervals. SREP appears to be more useful than traditional evoked pain threshold tolerance measures in terms of predicting levels of clinical pain and discriminating between fibromyalgia patients and healthy individuals.