Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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To assess the pain prevalence, pain intensity, and pain medication use in older patients with a diagnosed subtype of dementia, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or subjective cognitive impairment (SCI). ⋯ Outpatient memory clinic patients with mild to moderate AD and MD are less likely to report pain than patients with SCI. No difference in self-reported pain intensity was present. The high percentage of patients with and without dementia who do not use analgesics when in pain raises the question of whether pain treatment is adequate in older patients.
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Lumbar intervertebral disk herniation (LDH) is considered one of the major risk factors for lower back pain, mainly caused by irritation of a spinal nerve or its root. One of the genes related to pain perception is SCN9A, which encodes the voltage gated sodium channel NaV1.7, a key molecule involved in peripheral pain processing. It had been presented before that a common polymorphism within SCN9A (rs6746030: G > A, R1150W) might influence nociception in the general population. Hence, the present study was aimed at investigating the association between SCN9A polymorphism and pain sensitivity. ⋯ Our results suggest that the SCN9A rs6746030 polymorphism may be associated with pain intensity in patients suffering from symptomatic disc herniation.
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Benzhydrocodone is a hydrocodone prodrug that has been combined with acetaminophen (APAP) in a novel immediate-release analgesic. This study evaluated the relative bioavailability, intranasal abuse potential, and safety of benzhydrocodone/APAP compared with commercially available hydrocodone bitartrate (HB)/APAP. ⋯ Reduced hydrocodone exposure and drug liking at early time intervals, coupled with adverse nasal effects, can be expected to provide a level of deterrence to the intranasal route of abuse for benzhydrocodone/APAP.
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This study evaluated the safety and effectiveness of a once-daily, single-entity, extended-release hydrocodone bitartrate (HYD) among patients with chronic noncancer and non-neuropathic pain who required opioid rotation from a previous analgesic regimen that primarily consisted of immediate-release (IR) oxycodone. ⋯ In patients with chronic pain who received HYD over a 52-week period, treatment was generally well tolerated and provided effective analgesia among those who rotated from a pain regimen primarily consisting of IR oxycodone.
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Quality improvement (QI) is an underutilized approach among pain medicine specialists to improve comprehensive pain assessment and the delivery of multimodal pain care. We report the results of a QI program that utilized peer review and financial incentives to improve these processes in interventional pain clinics. ⋯ The results of this QI project suggest that pain clinics can make this value-based transition and offer high-quality multidisciplinary assessment and treatment, with good compliance among a group of physicians in primarily intervention-based practices.