Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Cluster headache is one of the most disabling of all headache conditions. Although some studies have investigated the psychological profile of patients with cluster headache, research on its impact on cognitive function in patients with episodic cluster headache outside the cluster bout is scant. ⋯ Patients with episodic cluster headache outside the bout showed worse executive functioning, working memory, language, and selective attention compared with healthy controls, regardless of the duration of disease or sleep quality.
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This research looked at whether notifying prescribers and pharmacies about patients who use multiple providers to obtain opioids reduces their prescribing activity (including use of multiple providers, numbers of opioid prescriptions, or amounts of opioids obtained). ⋯ Requiring prescribers to solicit patients' prescription histories is likely to be a more effective use of PDMP resources than proactive notification.
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Pain and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are strongly correlated in veteran populations. Arguments for which one condition predicts or worsens the other condition have gone in both directions. However, research addressing this issue has been primarily limited to cross-sectional studies rather than examinations of a potential bidirectional relationship between pain interference and PTSD symptoms over time. In addition, no studies have examined deployment injury status as potentially moderating this bidirectional effect in veterans. To address these gaps in the literature, the present longitudinal study examined whether there is a bidirectional relationship between pain interference and PTSD symptoms in a sample of male and female veterans returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, or Operation New Dawn (N = 729) and whether deployment injury status moderates this relationship. ⋯ These results indicate that physical symptom management should be a crucial target of psychological intervention for returning veterans with PTSD symptoms and deployment-related injuries.