Articles: pain-clinics.
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Context. The McGill University Health Center (MUHC) Cancer Pain Clinic offers an interdisciplinary approach to cancer pain management for patients. The core team includes a nurse clinician specialist in oncology and palliative care, a palliativist, an anaesthetist, and a radiation oncologist. ⋯ Beyond drug management, 60% of patients received other analgesic therapies, being the most common interventional pain procedures and psychosocial approaches. Conclusion. The MUHC interdisciplinary approach to cancer pain management provides meaningful relief of pain and other cancer-related symptoms and decreases patients' disability.
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Background. Although feasible protocols for pain assessment and management in long-term care (LTC) have been developed, these have not been implemented on a large-scale basis. Objective. ⋯ Conclusions. It is feasible to implement regular and systematic pain assessment in LTC. Future research should focus on ensuring effective clinical practices in response to assessment results, and determination of longer-term sustainability.
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The experience of chronic pain is universal, yet pain management services delivered by health professionals vary substantially, depending on the context and patient. This review is a part of a series that has examined the issue of chronic non-cancer pain services and management in different global cities. The review is structured as a case study of the availability of management services for people living with chronic non-cancer pain within the context of the Kuwaiti health systems, and the cases are built from evidence in the published literature identified through a comprehensive review process. ⋯ This review also includes a description of chronic pain patient personas to highlight expected barriers as well as compliance issues with services likely to be encountered in Kuwait. The case study analysis and persona descriptions illustrate a need to move beyond pain symptom management towards considering the entire person and his/her individual experience of pain such that health care success is judged by enhancement of patient well-being rather than access to services. A road map for improving integrative chronic pain management in Kuwait is discussed.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Jan 2016
ReviewEfficacy Outcome Measures for Procedural Sedation Clinical Trials in Adults: An ACTTION Systematic Review.
Successful procedural sedation represents a spectrum of patient- and clinician-related goals. The absence of a gold-standard measure of the efficacy of procedural sedation has led to a variety of outcomes being used in clinical trials, with the consequent lack of consistency among measures, making comparisons among trials and meta-analyses challenging. We evaluated which existing measures have undergone psychometric analysis in a procedural sedation setting and whether the validity of any of these measures support their use across the range of procedures for which sedation is indicated. ⋯ Certain scales, for example, those requiring motor stimulation, are unsuitable to evaluate sedation for procedures where movement is prohibited (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging scans). Further work is required to evaluate existing measures for procedures for which they were not developed. Depending on the outcomes of these efforts, it might ultimately be necessary to consider measures of sedation efficacy to be procedure specific.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Jan 2016
Comparative StudyRegional Versus General Anesthesia and the Incidence of Unplanned Health Care Resource Utilization for Postoperative Pain After Wrist Fracture Surgery: Results From a Retrospective Quality Improvement Project.
The establishment at our center of a dedicated regional anesthesia service in 2008-2009 has resulted in a marked increase in single-shot brachial plexus blocks (sBPBs) for ambulatory wrist fracture surgery. Despite the documented benefits of regional over general anesthesia (GA), there has been a perceived increase among sBPB patients in postoperative return rates for pain at our institution. We conducted a retrospective quality improvement project to examine this. ⋯ Patients who received sBPBs for ambulatory wrist fracture surgery had a higher rate of unplanned health care resource utilization caused by pain after hospital discharge than those undergoing GA. These findings warrant confirmation in a prospective trial and emphasize the need for a defined postdischarge analgesic pathway as well as the potential merits of perineural home catheters.