Articles: acute-pain.
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Neurobiology of aging · May 2012
The effect of aging on the density of the sensory nerve fiber innervation of bone and acute skeletal pain.
As humans age there is a decline in most sensory systems including vision, hearing, taste, smell, and tactile acuity. In contrast, the frequency and severity of musculoskeletal pain generally increases with age. ⋯ Thus, while bone mass, quality, and strength undergo a significant decline with age, the density of sensory nerve fibers that transduce noxious stimuli remain largely intact. These data may in part explain why musculoskeletal pain increases with age.
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Retrospective cohort study. ⋯ There was a lower risk of subsequent medical service usage among patients who received PT early after an episode of acute low back pain relative to those who received PT at later times. Medical specialty variations exist regarding early use of PT, with potential underutilization among generalist specialties.
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Prospective cohort study. ⋯ The prognosis of strictly defined acute LBP, with or without sciatica, is less favorable than commonly stated in practice guidelines based on failure to return to work. Broad initiatives to develop new means for the primary and secondary prevention of recurrent and chronic LBP are urgently needed.
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Fixed-dose combination analgesics are used widely, and available both on prescription and over-the-counter. Combination drugs should provide more analgesia than with any single drug in the combination, but there is no evidence in humans about whether oral combinations have just additive effects, or are synergistic or even subadditive. We suggest that the measured result for the combination would be the summation of the absolute benefit increase (effect of active drug minus effect of placebo) of each component of a combination if effects were (merely) additive, and greater than the sum of the absolute benefits if they were synergistic. ⋯ Results showed that expected numbers needed to treat (NNT) for additive effects were generally within the 95% confidence interval of measured NNTs. This was true for combinations of paracetamol plus ibuprofen and paracetamol plus opioids in acute pain, and naproxen plus sumatriptan in migraine, but not where efficacy was very low or very high, nor combinations of paracetamol plus dextropropoxyphene. There was no evidence of synergy, defined as supra-additive effects.