Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a behavioral health intervention with strong empirical support for chronic pain but, to date, widespread dissemination is limited. Digital solutions improve access to care and can be integrated into patients' everyday lives. ⋯ The results of this pilot study provide preliminary support for ACTsmart as an accessible and effective behavioral health treatment for adults with chronic pain and warrant a randomized controlled trial to further evaluate the efficacy of the intervention.
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Identifying biomarkers is a priority in translational chronic pain research. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and its sulfated form, DHEA-S, are adrenocortical steroids in the blood with neuroprotective properties that also produce sex hormones. They may capture key sex-specific neuroendocrine mechanisms of chronic pain. ⋯ Chronic pain and its functional interference correspond to lower blood DHEA-S levels in women.
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Deaths have increased, and prescription medications are involved in a significant percentage of deaths. Emergency department (ED) changes to managing acute pain and prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) can impact the potential for abuse. ⋯ Initiating a PDMP and instituting an aggressive ALTO program along with EHR-modified process flows have cumulative benefits in decreasing MME prescribed in an acute ED setting.
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Chronic constriction injury (CCI) is a model of neuropathic pain induced by four loose ligatures around the sciatic nerve. This work aimed to investigate the sensory, affective, cognitive, and motor changes induced by an adaptation of the CCI model by applying a single ligature around the sciatic nerve. ⋯ Overall these results demonstrate that our adapted CCI model, using a single ligature around the sciatic nerve, induces sensory, affective, cognitive, and motor alterations comparable to the CCI model with four ligatures without generating autotomy. This adaptation to the CCI model may therefore represent an appropriate and more easily performed model for inducing neuropathic pain and study underlying mechanisms and effective treatments.