Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain
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Multicenter Study
Treatment of 94 outpatients with chronic discogenic low back pain with the DRX9000: a retrospective chart review.
This study's goal was a retrospective chart audit of 100 outpatients with discogenic low back pain (LBP) lasting more than 12 weeks treated with a 2-month course of motorized spinal decompression via the DRX9000 (Axiom Worldwide, Tampa, FL, U.S.A.). ⋯ This retrospective chart audit provides preliminary data that chronic LBP may improve with DRX9000 spinal decompression. Randomized double-blind trials are needed to measure the efficacy of such systems.
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Although the burden of neuropathic pain is well-recognized, the descriptive epidemiology of specific neuropathic pain conditions has not been well-described. While painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy and postherpetic neuralgia have been widely evaluated, many other peripheral and central neuropathic pain syndromes have been less frequently studied. This review summarizes incidence and/or prevalence information about two relatively frequent neuropathic pain conditions-painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy and postherpetic neuralgia-and similarly summarizes the more limited epidemiologic information available for other peripheral and central neuropathic pain conditions. The data suggest that while our knowledge is still incomplete, the high frequency of several of these conditions in specific populations should be considered an important impetus for further studies designed to evaluate their contribution to the overall burden of neuropathic pain.
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Comparative Study
Medication Quantification Scale Version III: internal validation of detriment weights using a chronic pain population.
We report an internal validation of the Medication Quantification Scale (MQS III) using a chronic pain population. The MQS was designed as a methodology of quantifying different drug regimens in 1992, updated in 1998 (MQS II), and again updated in 2003 (MQS III) using "detriment" weights determined by surveying physician members of the American Pain Society. The MQS has been used as a unitary clinical and research outcome. ⋯ Our chronic pain sample-derived detriment weights did differ in some drug classes from that of the physician consensus, most notably the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, Opioid Schedule II, and NSAID class detriment. It is necessary to periodically resurvey large groups of physicians in order to control and modify the detriment weights of our categories in light of new information about detrimental effects (eg, COX-2 inhibitors), or to accommodate medical or political changes in prescribing habits (eg, more liberal opioid prescribing in the later years). This work suggests it may also be important to assess patients' perspective on detriment, as well as statistical and empiric use patterns.
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Providing complete anesthesia to the entire upper extremity remains challenging. We present the use of a novel, updated, regional anesthetic technique-an ultrasound-guided supraclavicular-interscalene block (UGSCIS)-to provide anesthesia and analgesia to a patient with end-stage liver disease who required fixation of a pathologic fracture of the humerus.
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Comparative Study
The prevalence of facet-joint-related chronic neck pain in postsurgical and nonpostsurgical patients: a comparative evaluation.
Facet (zygapophysial) joints may be clinically important sources of chronic cervical spinal pain. Previous studies have demonstrated the value and validity of controlled, comparative local anesthetic blocks in the diagnosis of facet joint pain, and reported an overall prevalence of 36% to 67% facet joint involvement in cervical spinal pain. The reports of lumbar facet joint-involvement in postsurgery syndrome have been shown to be highly variable with prevalence ranging from 8% to 32%. To date, however, the prevalence of postsurgical facet joint-related pain in the cervical spine has not been evaluated. In light of this, the present retrospective study was conducted to assess and compare the prevalence of chronic postsurgical facet joint cervical spinal pain to nonsurgical, chronic cervical facet joint pain. ⋯ Cervical facet joints are clinically important pain generators in a significant proportion of patients with chronic persistent neck pain after surgical intervention(s). The prevalence of cervical facet joint pain was similar in both postsurgical and nonsurgical patients.