Articles: pain-measurement.
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To establish inter-rater and test-retest reliability of use of a pressure algometer, 5 males and 5 females suffering from chronic fibromyalgia ('fibrositis'), and a normal group of 5 males and 5 females, were examined 2 times by each of 2 independent examiners, using 1 kg/sec rate of application, over 10 paired and typical 'tender points,' localized by skin marker. Tenderness thresholds of tender points were coded and analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA, for factors sex, normal/fibromyalgia, and side, rater, and time 1/time 2. There was significantly lower tenderness thresholds of tender points in fibromyalgia compared to normal subjects. ⋯ A 2-way ANOVA was conducted for summed and averaged scores for all tender and non-tender points, with factors normal/fibromyalgia and tender/non-tender; again, there was a large difference between normal and fibromyalgia subjects, and between tender and non-tender points. The interaction was small but significant, but there was a larger difference between fibromyalgia and normal subjects observed on non-tender points. The low tenderness threshold observed at the tender points of fibromyalgia patients may reflect a more generalized lowering of tenderness thresholds, seen at non-tender points as well.
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Comparative Study
Differential utility of medical procedures in the assessment of chronic pain patients.
Physicians are frequently called upon to evaluate patients with chronic pain to (1) establish the etiology, (2) determine the extent of impairment and disability, and (3) prescribe treatment. In many cases, there is little agreement as to what evaluation procedures should be used or how to weight and integrate these findings. Two studies were conducted to determine the domain of procedures pain specialists believe are most important in evaluation and the clinical utility of each. ⋯ The relevance of each of these procedures in the assessment of 100 pain patients was evaluated. Differential weights for each procedure derived from the survey were highly correlated with clinical practice. The results of the present studies provide a basis for development of a standardized assessment procedure that incorporates statistically derived weights to quantify medical findings.
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The pain drawings of 54 low-back-pain patients were examined to find out if it is possible to use them as a brief screening test in order to assess the psychological impairment of the patients. We were using the scoring system of Ransford et al, which we slightly changed, and chose as a criterion variable the ERMSS (Erweiterte Revidierte Mehrdimensionale Schmerzskala) of Cziske. ⋯ A correlation was found between pain drawing score and the sensory-discriminative dimension of pain perception, whereas there was no such correlation between drawing score and the affective dimension. These results indicate that the pain drawing score might not be a sufficiently valid instrument for assessing psychological disturbances in pain patients to allow it to be used for individual diagnosis without hesitation.
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There is no uniform etiology of cancer pain. It is essential to understand the pathogenesis of pain as far as possible before a therapeutic modality can be conceived. The anatomical relation of the painproducing lesion to the site of pain perception should be clear (local, projected and referred pain). ⋯ Due consideration is given to neuroleptics and antidepressive drugs. Information about hormones (corticosteroids, calcitonin a. o.) in cancer pain therapy conclude this survey. Enormous differences of morphine use (Austria: 0.66 kg vs Denmark 16.59 kg per million people per year) indicate that there is a great demand for further professional education in this field.
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J. Neurosci. Methods · May 1988
The automated measurement of hindlimb flexor reflex of the rat as a substitute for the tail-flick assay.
A new method for the study of stimulation-produced analgesia is introduced. The hindlimb flexor EMG, in response to noxious electrical stimulation of the paw, is used as an indirect index of analgesia induced by electrical stimulation at different brain sites. ⋯ The high repetition rate allows a rapid determination of the threshold current intensities or the brain stimuli required to suppress the hindlimb withdrawal. The test is objective, avoids skin damage and sensitization and can be performed semi-automatically when implemented with a small PC.