Articles: neuralgia.
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Multicenter Study
Predictive Factors Associated with Success and Failure for Calmare (Scrambler) Therapy: A Multi-Center Analysis.
Calmare (Scrambler) therapy is a novel therapeutic modality that purports to provide pain relief by "scrambling" afferent pain signals and replacing them with "non-pain" information through conventional lines of neural transmission. The goal of this study is to identify which factors are associated with treatment outcome for Calmare therapy. ⋯ A neuropathic or mixed neuropathic-nociceptive pain condition was associated with a positive treatment outcome. Investigators should consider these findings when developing selection criteria in clinical trials designed to determine the efficacy of Calmare therapy.
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The most common surgical options for trigeminal neuralgia (TN) are microvascular decompression (MVD) and gamma knife surgery (GKS). Currently, there is no definitive consensus as to which of the 2 options is more effective at providing immediate and long-lasting pain relief. This study seeks to better evaluate the differences between these 2 options in terms of rates of complete pain relief and pain-free recurrence. ⋯ MVD may be a more effective intervention than GKS because of the higher rates of initial pain-free outcomes and long-term pain-free outcomes, and lower rates pain-free recurrences.
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Increased apoptotic changes in the spinal cord may be responsible for the development of chronic constriction injury (CCI)-induced neuropathic pain. We previously reported the beneficial effect of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) in the treatment of CCI-induced neuropathic pain. In this study, we tested our hypotheses that HBO may achieve its beneficial effect by inhibiting CCI-induced proapoptosis gene expression and apoptosis in the spinal cord. ⋯ Overly expressed proapoptosis genes, and subsequent increase in spinal apoptotic cells, seem to contribute to the development of CCI-induced neuropathic pain. The inhibitory role of HBO on spinal proapoptosis genes and apoptotic changes may contribute to its beneficial effect on CCI-induced neuropathic pain.