Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Sacroiliac joint (SIJ) injection can occasionally be challenging. We describe our experience in using conventional technique, and we developed an adjustment to overcome difficulties incurred. ⋯ Oblique view technique can improve the success rate of SIJ injection.
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Patients with opioid use disorder maintained on methadone report more chronic pain than the general population. The current study characterized chronic pain in patients with opioid use disorder. ⋯ Results suggest there is a large discrepancy in the percent of patients who may need treatment for pain and those receiving treatment for pain and that more efforts should be made to provide standard pain management techniques to patients with opioid use disorder to reduce their overall level of pain and potentially improve their overall treatment outcomes.
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This cross-sectional study examines to whom and how fully sickle cell disease (SCD) patients talk to others about sickle cell pain, how helpful it is to talk with others about these pain episodes, and the association between talking to others about sickle cell pain episodes and patients' psychological adjustment and coping strategies in managing the disease. ⋯ The results document to whom and how helpful it is to talk with others about SCD pain episodes and how SCD disclosure is related to strategies for managing this disease.
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Low vitamin D is implicated in various chronic pain conditions with, however, inconclusive findings. Vitamin D might play an important role in mechanisms being involved in central processing of evoked pain stimuli but less so for spontaneous clinical pain. ⋯ The findings suggest a role of low vitamin D levels for heightened central sensitivity, particularly augmented pain processing upon mechanical stimulation in chronic pain patients. Vitamin D seems comparably less important for self-reports of spontaneous chronic pain.
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The objective of this study is to assess the autonomic nerve heart rate regulation system at rest and its immediate response to paced breathing among patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) as compared with age-matched healthy controls. ⋯ The increased heart rate and decreased HRV at rest in patients with CRPS suggest a general autonomic imbalance. The inability of the patients to increase HRV time domain values during paced breathing may suggest that these patients have sustained stress response with minimal changeability in response to slow-paced breathing stimuli.