Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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PTSD is associated with greater incidence of chronic pain. Pain catastrophizing often accounts for this association. Less is known about these relationships during the acute phase (1-2 months) following orthopedic traumatic injuries. We sought to understand which orthopedic traumatic injury-related PTSD symptoms were associated with acute pain and physical dysfunction and whether pain catastrophizing accounted for these associations. ⋯ Pain catastrophizing interventions may be best suited for limiting the impact of PTSD symptoms on pain at rest, but catastrophizing alone may not fully explain the relationship between PTSD symptoms and physical dysfunction after acute orthopedic injury. To prevent the negative association of PTSD symptoms, especially hyperarousal, on physical outcomes in acute pain populations, interventions may require more than solely targeting pain catastrophizing.
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Buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist, has emerging evidence as an alternative to full agonist opioids for treatment of acute pain. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of buprenorphine for acute pain in older adults. ⋯ This review did not find buprenorphine to be superior to alternative analgesia; however the mixed results provide scientific rationale for future studies testing buprenorphine in older populations.
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To explore the relationship between sociodemographic, clinical, and neurophysiological variables and health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) of patients with phantom limb pain. ⋯ We found firsthand two new independent predictors of HR-QOL in individuals with PLP, namely, the neurophysiological metric ICF and gabapentin usage. These results highlight the role of the motor cortex excitability in the HR-QOL and stress the need for treatments that favor the neuroplastic adaptation after amputation, for which ICF may be used as a possible marker.