Scandinavian journal of pain
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Multimodal rehabilitation (MMR) programmes, including, physical training, educational and psychological interventions by an interdisciplinary team are found to be more successful for patients with disabling chronic pain compared with less comprehensive treatments. MMR programmes are based on the biopsychosocial model and the goal is usually to improve function, quality of life and facilitate and enable return to work. As pain clinics traditionally offer conventional medical pain treatment, there is limited knowledge about MMR given in this context. The aim of our study was to describe characteristics of patients with chronic pain, treated with a MMR programme at a conventional pain clinic, to evaluate patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) from start to one year after, and to study possibly associated factors for the improvement of health-related quality of life after one year. ⋯ Since access to rehabilitation clinics in Sweden may be limited, the availability of MMR can increase by providing this type of intervention in pain clinics. Increased knowledge of MMR in different settings can also contribute to increased understanding and collaboration between pain clinics and rehabilitation units.
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Low back pain (LBP) is a debilitating problem worldwide causing disability and reducing quality of life. The Fear Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ) was developed on the basis of the assumption that fear-avoidance beliefs play a major role in LBP-related disability. It comprises 16 items scored by the patient and includes sub-scores for fear-avoidance beliefs regarding work and physical activity. This study aimed to translate and validate the Finnish version of the FABQ and to measure its properties among Finnish patients with LBP. ⋯ The expert committee successfully created an applicable Finnish version of the FABQ. The Finnish FABQ is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing LBP patients' fear avoidance behaviour and has similar properties to those found in other validation studies of the FABQ. Thus it can be used for assessing the risk of disability due to fear avoidance behaviour in Finnish-speaking patients with LBP for both clinical and scientific purposes.
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Acute pain in response to injury is an important mechanism that serves to protect living beings from harm. However, persistent pain remaining long after the injury has healed serves no useful purpose and is a disabling condition. Persistent postsurgical pain, which is pain that lasts more than 3 months after surgery, affects 10-50% of patients undergoing elective surgery. Many of these patients are affected by neuropathic pain which is characterised as a pain caused by lesion or disease in the somatosensory nervous system. When established, this type of pain is difficult to treat and new approaches for prevention and treatment are needed. A possible contributing mechanism for the transition from acute physiological pain to persistent pain involves low-grade inflammation in the central nervous system (CNS), glial dysfunction and subsequently an imbalance in the neuron-glial interaction that causes enhanced and prolonged pain transmission. ⋯ Larger studies in clinical settings are needed before these findings can be applied in a clinical context. Potentially, by targeting inflammatory activated glial cells and not only neurons, a new arena for development of pharmacological agents for persistent pain is opened.
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Quantification of intraepidermal nerve fibre density (IENFD) is an important small fibre measure in distal symmetric polyneuropathies (DSP), but quantitative evaluation of additional structural and functional factors may help in elucidating the underlying mechanisms, and in improving the diagnostic accuracy in DSP. The literature reports a weak or moderate relationship between IENFD and spontaneous and evoked pain in neuropathies, but the relationship between functional and structural small fibre parameters in patients with DSP is unclear. The objectives of the current study, therefore, were to determine morphological and functional parameters related to small nerve fibres in subjects with distal symmetric polyneuropathy (DSP) and healthy controls, and to characterize the interplay among these parameters in these two groups. ⋯ Combining small fibre parameters may improve the diagnostic accuracy of DSP.