Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Associations of Coexisting Pain and Fatigue Severity with Physical Performance and Quality of Life among Middle-Aged and Older Individuals with Chronic Knee Pain: A randomized controlled trial.
To examine associations of combined pain and fatigue severity with physical performance and quality of life in people with chronic knee pain. ⋯ Coexisting moderate pain and moderate fatigue were related to worse physical performance and QOL. Fatigue contributed to lower levels of mental QOL. Clinical assessment of fatigue in addition to pain should be included as a standard examination for chronic knee pain.
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Disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could disproportionately affect the health of vulnerable populations, including patients experiencing persistent health conditions (i.e., chronic pain), along with populations living within deprived, lower socioeconomic areas. The current cross-sectional study characterized relationships between neighborhood deprivation and perceived changes in pain-related experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic (early-September to mid-October 2020) for adult patients (N = 97) with nonspecific chronic low back pain. ⋯ The current findings offer evidence that changes in pain coping during the pandemic may be disproportionately worse for those living in deprived areas. Considering poorer pain coping may contribute to long-term consequences, the current findings suggest the need for further attention and intervention to reduce the negative effect of the pandemic for such vulnerable populations.
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Standard of care for opioid use disorder (OUD) includes medication and counseling. However, there is an unmet need for complementary approaches to treat OUD patients coping with pain; furthermore, few studies have probed neurobiological features of pain or its management during OUD treatment. This preliminary study examines neurobiological and behavioral effects of a virtual reality-based meditative intervention in patients undergoing methadone maintenance treatment (MMT). ⋯ These preliminary findings demonstrate feasibility, therapeutic promise, and brain basis of a meditative intervention for OUD patients undergoing MMT.
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The past two decades have witnessed a surge in the use of cervical spine joint procedures including joint injections, nerve blocks and radiofrequency ablation to treat chronic neck pain, yet many aspects of the procedures remain controversial. ⋯ Cervical medial branch radiofrequency ablation may provide benefit to well-selected individuals, with medial branch blocks being more predictive than intra-articular injections. More stringent selection criteria are likely to improve denervation outcomes, but at the expense of false-negatives (ie, lower overall success rate). Clinical trials should be tailored based on objectives, and selection criteria for some may be more stringent than what is ideal in clinical practice.