Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Self-compassion meditation, which involves compassion toward the self in moments of suffering, shows promise for improving pain-related functioning, but its underlying mechanisms are unknown. This longitudinal, exploratory pilot study investigated the effects of a brief (eight contact hours, two weeks of home practice) self-compassion training on pain-related brain processing in chronic low back pain (cLBP). ⋯ These findings, though exploratory and lacking comparison with a control condition, suggest that self-compassion training supports regulation of pain through the involvement of self-referential (vPCC), salience-processing (TPJ), and emotion regulatory (dlPFC) brain areas. The results also suggest that self-compassion could be an important target in the psychotherapeutic treatment of cLBP, although further studies using controlled experimental designs are needed to determine the specificity of these effects.
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Increasingly, patients are seeking same-day care at urgent care (UC) facilities. Little is known about the health care utilization patterns of patients who visit UC facilities for headache and migraine. We examined the frequency of headache and migraine visits and revisits at UC facilities. ⋯ In just eight months, there were >10,000 headache NOS and migraine visits to UC facilities in NYC, with half of revisits occurring within 90 days. Future work should examine headache management in UC facilities.
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To determine the short-term effect of graded motor imagery (GMI) on the affective components of pain and range of motion in subjects with chronic shoulder pain syndrome. ⋯ We conclude that a short-term GMI program improves the affective components of pain and shoulder flexion AROM in patients with chronic shoulder pain syndrome.
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Recent studies suggest that sensory phenotyping may provide critical information for the diagnosis and management of patients with chronic neuropathic pain (NP). However, many formal quantitative sensory testing (QST) paradigms require expensive equipment, a dedicated location, and substantial time commitments on the part of patient and examiner, highlighting the need for a convenient and portable "bedside" QST battery. We developed and tested a bedside QST battery in a sample of patients with chronic NP. ⋯ Results from the present study may have important implications for the sensory phenotyping and subsequent management of patients with chronic NP. Implementation of a protocol that uses inexpensive, portable, and convenient tools may allow for the application of QST in variety of clinical settings and advance NP research.
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The goal of this study was to identify central sensitization-related symptom severity subgroups in a large multicountry sample composed of patients with chronic pain and pain-free individuals using the Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI). ⋯ Our results indicated that a three-cluster solution clearly captured the heterogeneity of the CSI data. The calculator might provide an efficient way of classifying subjects into the cluster groups. Future studies should analyze the extent to which the CSI cluster classification correlates with other patient-reported and objective signs and symptoms of CS in patients with chronic pain, their associations with clinical outcomes, health-related costs, biomarkers, (etc.), and responsiveness to treatment.