Pain physician
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There is no truly optimal treatment to cure refractory neuralgia of the infraorbital nerve. Recently, nondestructive pulsed radiofrequency (PRF) has become one of the most attractive interventional techniques for painful disorders. However, use of the technique for infraorbital neuralgia has been seldom reported. ⋯ Results demonstrated PRF treatment under computed tomography (CT) guidance for infraorbital neuralgia is safe, effective, and is expected to become an alternative for patients experiencing ineffective conservative therapy. Increasing the output voltage of PRF could be the chosen method to improve the efficacy.
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There is limited evidence about surgical outcomes after lumbar spinal surgery in patients with neuropathic pain (NP) or the prevalence of NP proportions among patients with degenerative lumbar diseases who are candidates for a surgical interventions. ⋯ There was a high prevalence of NP in Korean patients scheduled for lumbar spine surgery, and these patients suffered greater pain and lower HRQoL than nociceptive pain patients. The more remarkable improvement NP patients showed after treatment highlights the importance of appropriate diagnosis and treatment of NP.
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The most widely researched risk/complication following vertebroplasty (VP) or kyphoplasty (KP) is that of adjacent level fracture (ALF). Current literature results regarding the effect of intradiscal extravasation of cement on the risk of ALF is conflicting with about half of the studies concluding there is no added risk with endplate extravasation and half of the studies reporting opposite conclusions. ⋯ Cement endplate extravasation isolated to the anterior third of the vertebral body is associated with is significantly higher odds of ALF after VP or KP in patients with osteoporosis.
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Corticosteroid injection has a wide range of success in adhesive capsulitis but the reason for this has not yet been explained. We hypothesized that this difference might be due to the distribution of the corticosteroids injected into the joint cavity because particulate steroid deposits in the capsule and will not be moved over time by shoulder motion. ⋯ External rotation of the shoulder in adhesive capsulitis has greater improvement as the corticosteroid solutions injected into the glenohumeral joint are increasingly dispersed to the subscapularis area. However, this does not affect the pain improvement after the injection.
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Observational Study
Associations Between Cognitive Performance and Pain in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Comorbidity with Fibromyalgia Does Matter.
In addition to the frequently reported pain complaints, performance-based cognitive capabilities in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) with and without comorbid fibromyalgia (FM) are significantly worse than those of healthy controls. In various chronic pain populations, cognitive impairments are known to be related to pain severity. However, to the best of our knowledge, the association between cognitive performance and experimental pain measurements has never been examined in CFS patients. ⋯ The results underline disease heterogeneity in CFS by indicating that a measure of endogenous pain inhibition might be a significant predictor of cognitive functioning in CFS patients with FM, while self-reported pain appears more appropriate to predict cognitive functioning in CFS patients without FM.