Articles: pain-clinics.
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Bmc Musculoskel Dis · Jan 2015
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyChange in pain, disability and influence of fear-avoidance in a work-focused intervention on neck and back pain: a randomized controlled trial.
Neck and back pain are among the most common causes of prolonged disability, and development of interventions with effect on pain, disability and return to work is important. Reduction of fear avoidance might be one mechanism behind improvement after interventions. The aim of the present study was to evaluate changes in pain and disability at the 12-month follow-up of patients with neck and back pain treated with a work-focused intervention compared to patients treated with standard interventions, and the influence of improvement fear avoidance beliefs during the interventions on pain, disability and return to work at 12-month follow-up. ⋯ Short work-focused rehabilitation had the same effect on pain and disability as control interventions. Reduction in FABQ-W score after treatment seems to be an important predictor for return to work in both groups.
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Pain is among the most important symptoms in terms of prevalence and cause of distress for cancer patients and their families. However, there is a lack of clearly defined measures of quality pain management to identify problems and monitor changes in improvement initiatives. ⋯ A set of good practice indicators has been built and pilot tested as a feasible, reliable and useful quality monitoring tool, and underscoring particular and important areas for improvement.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Identifying specific profiles in patients with different degrees of painful knee osteoarthritis based on serological biochemical and mechanistic pain biomarkers: a diagnostic approach based on cluster analysis.
Biochemical and pain biomarkers can be applied to patients with painful osteoarthritis profiles and may provide more details compared with conventional clinical tools. The aim of this study was to identify an optimal combination of biochemical and pain biomarkers for classification of patients with different degrees of knee pain and joint damage. Such profiling may provide new diagnostic and therapeutic options. ⋯ Four distinct knee pain profiles were identified: profile A (N = 27), profile B (N = 59), profile C (N = 85), and profile D (N = 41). Each knee pain profile had a unique combination of biochemical markers, pain biomarkers, physical impairments, and psychological factors that may provide the basis for mechanism-based diagnosis, individualized treatment, and selection of patients for clinical trials evaluating analgesic compounds. These results introduce a new profiling for knee OA and should be regarded as preliminary.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Jan 2015
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyNicardipine Is Superior to Esmolol for the Management of Postcraniotomy Emergence Hypertension: A Randomized Open-Label Study.
Emergence hypertension after craniotomy is a well-documented phenomenon for which natural history is poorly understood. Most clinicians attribute this phenomenon to an acute and transient increase in catecholamine release, but other mechanisms such as neurogenic hypertension or activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system have also been proposed. In this open-label study, we compared the monotherapeutic antihypertensive efficacy of the 2 most titratable drugs used to treat postcraniotomy emergence hypertension: nicardipine and esmolol. We also investigated the effect of preoperative hypertension on postcraniotomy hypertension and the natural history of postcraniotomy hypertension in the early postoperative period. ⋯ Nicardipine is superior to esmolol for the treatment of postcraniotomy emergence hypertension. This type of hypertension is thought to be a transient phenomenon not solely related to sympathetic activation and catecholamine surge but also possibly encompassing other physiologic factors. For treating postcraniotomy emergence hypertension, nicardipine is a relatively effective sole drug, whereas if esmolol is used, rescue antihypertensive medications should be readily available.
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Predictors of outcome in lateral epicondylalgia, which is mainly characterized as a mechanical hyperalgesia, are largely limited to sociodemographic and symptomatic factors. Quantitative sensory testing is used to study altered pain processing in various chronic pain conditions and may be of prognostic relevance. ⋯ Early assessment of cold pain threshold could be a useful clinical tool to help identify patients at risk of poorer outcomes and might provide direction for future research into mechanism-based treatment approaches for these patients.