Articles: chronic.
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The aim of the study was to evaluate an educational video designed to modify the pain concept of chronic pain patients. It is commonly described that chronic pain patients foster an illness model which is dominated by purely medical assumptions about causes of pain and its modulation and treatment. Furthermore the mostly unrealistic hope for total pain relief which is expected from the pain expert guides the patients' seek for help. ⋯ The Ss participating in the study were 47 chronic pain patients of a pain ambulance and 42 patients of a pain clinic (inpatient setting). The results showed that after viewing the pain video the groups differed significantly in their pain concept as predicted. The use of an educational video, like the one evaluated, seems useful to initiate first steps in illness concept modification by expanding and enriching the patients attitude by assumptions about the influence of psychological factors on pain maintenance and management and shaping realistic attitudes towards treatment.
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The care of severely ill patients, whether in hospital, in residential homes or in their own homes, should be characterized by humanity and dictated by efforts to make life worth living for the person concerned. Preservation of the quality of life should be paramount if the doctor can no longer effect a cure. ⋯ Close contact with members of the family and with friends and neighbours is particularly important in this phase of life. A sick person's quality of life is what the legislator had in mind when domiciliary care was given priority over residential care at the time of the legal changes to reform the health care system.
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The use of implantable systems for intrathecal administration of opioids in chronic pain of non-malignant origin is a controversial subject. Opioid therapy is reserved mainly for pain patients with malignant disease and reduced life-expectancy. The main reasons for this restricted range of indications of chronic subarachnoid administration of opioids are fear of addiction and the build-up of tolerance. ⋯ It seems that neuropathic and deafferentation pain syndroms are susceptible to intrathecal opioids. The initial daily average dose of morphine was 2.6 mg/day, increasing to 6.1 mg/day after 25 months without the development of major tachyphylaxis. the administration of intrathecal opioids by means of implantable systems is justified in carefully selected patients with chronic non-malignant pain. This method should be applied in preference to destructive neurosurgical treatments.
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The analgesic effectiveness of physical therapy in rheumatology is dependent on the differentiated clinical picture (joint, soft parts, spinal column, musculature) and on the differentiated therapeutic remedy (intensity, duration of single treatments, frequency, duration of therapeutic series). Physico- and kinesitherapy can be distinguished with regard to objective and subjective doses; manual therapy is between them. ⋯ The problem "rheumatism and pain" mainly exists at the level of "chronic"; diagnostics of movement function (articular and muscular functions) on one hand and dosage of therapeutic remedies (drugs and remedies of physiotherapy) on the other are the guidelines. Course (rehabilitation) as well as onset (prevention) of rheumatic clinical pictures determine the further strategy of pain therapy.