Articles: low-back-pain.
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Retrospective cohort study. ⋯ III.
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The transition from acute to chronic low back pain (LBP) in community settings is not well understood. The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of recruitment and estimate the transition and continuation of chronic LBP. We also explored characteristics associated with this transition to chronic LBP. ⋯ Acute LBP is a common condition in the community and frequently transitions to chronic LBP, suggesting the potential for substantial burden in the community. PERSPECTIVE: This article presents the feasibility of conducting a community-based study to describe the transition, continuation, and psychosocial predictors of acute to chronic low back pain. These findings could help identify community participants at high risk of incident and continued chronic low back pain.
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Pain profiles (e.g. pro- and anti-nociceptive) can be developed using quantitative sensory testing (QST) but substantial variability exists. This study describes the variability in temporal summation of pain (TSP) and conditioned pain modulation (CPM) in chronic musculoskeletal pain patients, proposes cut-off values, and explores the association with clinical pain intensity. ⋯ This analysis shows that there is variability when assessing TSP and CPM in both pain-free subjects and patients with chronic pain. A cut-off for determining when a person is pain-sensitive is proposed, and data based on this cut-off approach suggest that significantly more patients with osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia are pain-sensitive (i.e. higher TSP and lower CPM) compared to pain-free subjects. This analysis does not find an association between pain sensitivity and clinical pain.
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Low peak alpha frequency (PAF) is an electroencephalography (EEG) outcome associated reliably with high acute pain sensitivity. However, existing research suggests that the relationship between PAF and chronic pain is more variable. This variability could be attributable to chronic pain groups typically being examined as homogenous populations, without consideration being given to potential diagnosis-specific differences. Indeed, while emerging work has compared individuals with chronic pain to healthy controls, no previous studies have examined differences in PAF between diagnoses or across chronic pain subtypes. ⋯ Our work suggests that, contrary to previous hypotheses, inter-individual differences in PAF reflect diagnosis-specific mechanisms rather than the general presence of chronic pain, and therefore may have important implications for future work regarding individually-tailored pain management strategies.