Articles: pain-measurement.
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Neuropathic pain-pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system-is underdiagnosed and difficult to treat. However, development of easy-to-use questionnaires based mainly on self-reports of symptoms has improved diagnosis and management. Two types of questionnaires (screening and assessment) have been validated, and rapidly translated and revalidated in several languages, probably because of their simplicity. ⋯ Assessment questionnaires measure neuropathic symptoms and have been used to create phenotypic profiles of patients in various neuropathic conditions. These profiles can predict treatment outcomes, and thus enable a personalised therapeutic approach. The dissemination of these questionnaires in different countries should further improve diagnosis and management worldwide and advance knowledge on the mechanisms of neuropathic pain.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · May 2018
Case ReportsRefractory Pain Management in Amyloid-Associated Peripheral Neuropathy.
Systemic amyloidosis is a disease that often involves multiple organ systems, including the peripheral nervous system. Patients may present with severe, refractory neuropathic pain; however, the optimal treatment approach for pain for these patients remains unclear. ⋯ Severe pain in the setting of amyloid neuropathy is often difficult to treat. To our knowledge, this represents the first report of Scrambler therapy or an implanted intrathecal drug delivery system used for a patient with refractory amyloidosis-related neuropathic pain, resulting in substantial analgesic benefit and improved quality of life.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · May 2018
Spinal Cord Stimulation 50 Years Later: Clinical Outcomes of Spinal Cord Stimulation Based on Randomized Clinical Trials-A Systematic Review.
To assess the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) for each indication, one must critically assess each specific clinical outcome to identify outcomes that benefit from SCS therapy. To date, a comprehensive review of clinically relevant outcome-specific evidence regarding SCS has not been published. We aimed to assess all randomized controlled trials from the world literature for the purpose of evaluating the clinical outcome-specific efficacy of SCS for the following outcomes: perceived pain relief or change pain score, quality of life, functional status, psychological impact, analgesic medication utilization, patient satisfaction, and health care cost and utilization. ⋯ Evidence assessments for each outcome for each indication were depicted in tabular format. Outcome-specific evidence scores were established for each of the abovementioned indications, providing both physicians and patients with a summary of evidence to assist in choosing the optimal evidence-based intervention. The evidence presented herein has broad applicability as it encompasses a breadth of patient populations, variations of SCS therapy, and comparable controls that, together, reflect comprehensive clinical decision making.
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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) commonly accompanies complex chronic pain, yet PTSD is often overlooked in chronic pain management. Using the 4-item Primary Care (PC)-PTSD screening tool, we evaluated the relationship between the number and type of PC-PTSD symptoms endorsed and a set of patient-reported outcomes, including: pain intensity and interference, function, mood, quality of life, and substance abuse risk in a consecutive sample of patients with chronic pain (n = 4,402). Patients completed PainTracker, a Web-based patient-reported outcome tool that provides a multidimensional evaluation of chronic pain, as part of their intake evaluation at a specialty pain clinic in a community setting. ⋯ The occurrence of even 1 PTSD symptom was associated with overall poorer outcomes, suggesting that subsyndromal PTSD is clinically significant in the context of chronic pain. Among the 4 PTSD domains assessed, "numbness/detachment" was most strongly associated with negative pain outcomes in relative weight analysis. Results from this cross-sectional study suggest that a range of pain-related outcomes may be significantly related to comorbid PTSD.
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To develop modern patient-reported outcome measures that assess pain interference and pain behavior after spinal cord injury (SCI). ⋯ The SCI-QOL Pain Interference item bank and the SCI-QOL Pain Behavior scale demonstrated robust psychometric properties. The Pain Interference item bank is available as a computer adaptive test or short form for research and clinical applications, and scores are transformed to the PROMIS metric.