Pain physician
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Multicenter Study
Subjective Cognitive Symptoms During a Migraine Attack: A Prospective Study of a Clinic-Based Sample.
A migraine attack aggregates a range of different symptoms, besides pain, that contribute to attack-related disability. Cognitive dysfunction is an unacknowledged part of the migraine attack. ⋯ This study detailed the frequency and characteristics of migraine attack-related subjective cognitive symptoms and found its frequency to be similar to reports of other migraine defining symptoms (ex. nausea, photophobia) in recent clinical series. Patients' reports were consistent and dominated by complaints of attention difficulties, diminished cognitive efficiency, and processing speed impairment.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
A Novel Mini-invasive Approach to the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain: The PENS Study.
Peripheral neuromodulation is often used as chronic neuropathic pain treatment. Percutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (PENS) is generally utilized with several probes at the same time and repeated treatments. ⋯ PENS therapy produced significant and long-lasting pain relief in chronic peripheral neuropathic pains of different etiology. The present study confirms the feasibility, safety, and repeatability of this minimally invasive technique.
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Multicenter Study
Usefulness of the Brief Pain Inventory in Patients with Opioid Addiction Receiving Methadone Maintenance Treatment.
Chronic pain is implicated as a risk factor for illicit opioid use among patients with opioid addiction treated with methadone. However, there exists conflicting evidence that supports and refutes this claim. These discrepancies may stem from the large variability in pain measurement reported across studies. ⋯ We caution the interpretation of these result since they are still reflective of participants already maintained on an opioid substitution therapy (OST), which can largely differ from patients who drop out of methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) or never seek treatment altogether.
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Chronic neuropathic pain has been recognized as contributing to a significant proportion of chronic pain globally. Among these, spinal pain is of significance with failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS), generating considerable expense for the health care systems with increasing prevalence and health impact. ⋯ There is significant (Level I to II) evidence of the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation in lumbar FBSS; whereas, there is moderate (Level II to III) evidence for high frequency stimulation; there is limited evidence for adaptive stimulation and burst stimulation.
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Basing their rationale on multiple publications from Institute of Medicine (IOM), specifically Crossing the Quality Chasm, policy makers have focused on a broad range of issues, including assessment of the influence of medical practice organization structures on quality performance and development of quality measures. The 2006 Tax Relief and Health Care Act established the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), to enable eligible professionals to report health care quality and health outcome information that cannot be obtained from standard Medicare claims. However, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 required the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to incorporate a combination of cost and quality into the payment systems for health care as a precursor to value-based payments. ⋯ Indeed, all of the above may only be one-third or one-fourth of the cost to completely implement the PQRS system. Thus far, data across all specialties shows participation to be around 50%. In addition, penalties for lack of reporting of PQRS measures stands to be controversial to the Supreme Court ruling that unfunded mandates must not be permitted and also lack of significant relationships with improvement in quality in the overall analysis in multiple publications.