Articles: back-pain.
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A retrospective study. ⋯ 4.
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An epidural abscess represents a rare acute medical emergency, with a reported incidence of 2.5/10 000 hospital admissions annually. The clinical features include fever, spinal pain, radiating nerve root pain and leg weakness. When sepsis is present, prompt recognition is required to initiate appropriate antimicrobial therapy and surgical decompression. ⋯ With spinal surgical services centralised, physicians may not encounter this clinical diagnosis more often in day-to-day hospital medical practice. The unique aspect of this case is the persistence and then the recurrence (despite 6 weeks of antimicrobial therapy and a second debridement) of S. aureus infection. Furthermore, the paucity of clinical recommendations and the controversy regarding the adequate duration of antimicrobial therapy are notable features of this case.
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Complement Ther Med · Dec 2016
Assessing knowledge about acupuncture: A survey of people with back pain in the UK.
Despite the prevalence of acupuncture treatment in the UK, and the increasing evidence of safety and effectiveness, the information presented to patients by practitioners frequently contains inaccuracies. As knowledge of treatment affects both patient decision-making and treatment outcomes, this study aimed to establish what is known about acupuncture in a sample of people who had, and had not, previously experienced acupuncture. ⋯ The study identified key gaps in knowledge about acupuncture among patients. In particular, many participants were unaware that acupuncture is available from the UK National Health Service and that acupuncturists are not subject to statutory regulation in the UK. These knowledge gaps should be addressed in order to increase people's understanding of and access to acupuncture.
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Low back pain has a life time prevalence of 70% to 85%. Approximately 10% to 20% of all patients experience recurrent episodes or develop chronic low back pain. Sociodemographic, clinical, and psychological characteristics explain the transition from acute to chronic low back pain only to a limited extent. ⋯ We included 214 patients with either acute or chronic low back pain and compared RRF between groups in both univariable and multivariable analyses adjusted for different sociodemographic and clinical characteristics possibly associated with the transition to chronic pain. We found a mean difference between patients with acute and chronic low back pain of -0.01 (95% confidence interval [CI], -0.06 to 0.04) in the crude, -0.02 (95% CI, -0.08 to 0.04) in the age and sex adjusted, and -0.02 (95% CI, -0.09 to 0.05) in the fully adjusted model. Our results suggest that the enlargement of RRF area may not be associated with the transition from acute to chronic low back pain.
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Piriformis syndrome is an uncommon cause of buttock and leg pain. Some treatment options include the injection of piriformis muscle with local anesthetic and steroids. Various techniques for piriformis muscle injection have been described. ⋯ All 5 patients have improved their pain measured by numeric verbal scale. One patient had a sciatic after injection that improved in 10 days spontaneously. We describe an ultrasound-guided piriformis muscle injection that has the advantages of being effective, simple, and safe.