Articles: back-pain.
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The conscious sense of our body, or body image, is often taken for granted, but it is disrupted in many clinical states including complex regional pain syndrome and phantom limb pain. Is the same true for chronic back pain? Body image was assessed, via participant drawings, in six patients with chronic back pain and ten healthy controls. Tactile threshold and two-point discrimination threshold (TPD) were assessed in detail. ⋯ Tactile threshold was unremarkable for patients and controls. These preliminary data indicate that body image is disrupted, and tactile acuity is decreased, in the area of usual pain, in patients with chronic back pain. This finding raises the possibility that training body image or tactile acuity may help patients in chronic spinal pain, as it has been shown to do in patients with complex regional pain syndrome or phantom limb pain.
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We conducted a systematic review to assess the (cost)effectiveness of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) in relieving certain kinds of pain for people with chronic pain owing to failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS). ⋯ For the effectiveness analysis, 1 fully published randomized controlled trial, one randomized controlled trial with 6 month results (both of moderate quality), 1 retrospective cohort study, and 13 case series (all of low quality) were included. The mean period of follow-up was between 6 months and 8.8 years. These studies show that SCS is effective in the treatment of FBSS in terms of pain reduction. The effect was consistent in all analyzed studies. Improvements were also reported for other outcomes, such as quality of life and functional status. All the studies reported some complications, most of which were technical problems. In terms of cost-effectiveness, 3 studies met the inclusion criteria and offered the same conclusion that SCS is both more effective and less costly in the long-term, but there is an initial high cost associated with device implantation and maintenance.
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The impact of lumbar spinal surgery is commonly evaluated with three patient-reported outcome measures: Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), the physical component summary (PCS) of the Short Form of the Medical Outcomes Study (SF-36), and pain scales. A minimum clinically important difference (MCID) is a threshold used to measure the effect of clinical treatments. Variable threshold values have been proposed as MCID for those instruments despite a lack of agreement on the optimal MCID calculation method. ⋯ The minimum detectable change (MDC) appears as a statistically and clinically appropriate MCID value. MCID values in this sample were 12.8 points for ODI, 4.9 points for PCS, 1.2 points for back pain, and 1.6 points for leg pain.