Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain
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Patient perception of healthcare quality is of growing interest. It has been shown that patient satisfaction is associated with compliance with medical advice and clinical outcome. The 3-fold purpose of this study was to identify which attributes of the patient-physician interaction most strongly correlated with patients' perceptions of provider quality of care, to identify key drivers that move patients' perception of overall provider quality from "very good" to "excellent," and to identify features of the pain clinic experience that were most important to patients but were simultaneously perceived as lacking. ⋯ These results may guide pain clinic physicians as they seek to improve patient perceptions of their care and ultimately patient outcomes.
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Review Comparative Study
Guidelines for neuropathic pain management in patients with cancer: a European survey and comparison.
Between 19% and 39% of patients with cancer pain suffer from neuropathic pain. Its diagnosis and treatment is still challenging. Yet, national clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) have been developed in several European countries to assist practitioners in managing these patients safely and legally. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of the development and reporting of these CPGs. ⋯ The quality of the development process of the 9 included CPGs varied widely. CPGs should be developed within a structured guideline program, including methodological support. As developing a CPG is expensive and time-consuming, we recommend more international cooperation to increase quality and lower the development costs.
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Case Reports
Ultrasound imaging of embedded shrapnel facilitates diagnosis and management of myofascial pain syndrome.
Trigger points can result from a variety of inciting events including muscle overuse, trauma, mechanical overload, and psychological stress. When the myofascial trigger points occur in cervical musculature, they have been known to cause headaches. Ultrasound imaging is being increasingly used for the diagnosis and interventional management of various painful conditions. ⋯ Ultrasound guided trigger point injection, followed by physical therapy resolved his symptoms. This is a unique report of embedded shrapnel and coexisting myofascial pain syndrome revealed by ultrasound imaging. The association between shrapnel and myofascial pain syndrome requires further investigation.
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There are few studies estimating the prevalence of chronic pain in countries from the Middle East. We translated the Structured Telephone Interviews Questionnaire on Chronic Pain from English into Arabic and assessed its reliability and linguistic validity before using it in a telephone survey in Libya to gather preliminary prevalence data for chronic pain. Intraclass correlations for scaled items were high, and there were no differences in answers to nominal items between the first and second completions of the questionnaire. ⋯ Some participants complained that the questionnaire was too long with a mean ± SD call duration of 20 ± 5.4 minutes. We conclude that the Arabic Structured Telephone Interviews Questionnaire on Chronic Pain was reliable and linguistically valid and could be used in a large-scale telephone survey on the Libyan population. Our preliminary estimate of prevalence should be considered with caution because of the small sample size.
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The objective of this study was to determine whether self-reported visual analogue scale (VAS) low back pain (LBP) scores are valid against matched psychophysically induced pressure pain scores. Two hundred thirty-six chronic LBP patients (some with neck pain) reported their LBP and neck pain scores on a VAS immediately before psychophysical pressure pain induction used to determine pain threshold (PTHRE), pain tolerance (PTOL), and a psychophysical pressure pain score which matched (PMAT) their current LBP. Pearson Product-Moment correlation coefficients were calculated between reported VAS neck scores, reported VAS LBP scores, and the psychophysically determined LBP PMAT scores. ⋯ There was a significant correlation between the LBP PMAT scores and the reported LBP VAS scores for both types of psychophysical LBP PMAT score calculations; however, there were insignificant correlations between the LBP PMAT scores and reported neck VAS scores. Chronic LBP patients can match their self-reported VAS LBP scores to psychophysically determined LBP PMAT scores. As such, self-reported VAS chronic LBP scores appear to be valid against one type of psychophysical measurement.