Articles: pain.
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Any pain experience results from the interaction of biological and functional (namely, psychological and environmental) factors. In some cases functional factors may be primarily responsible for exacerbating and maintaining pain, therefore, the physician should be attentive to a variety of signs that may indicate a significant nonorganic component to the patient's pain. Problems in case management commonly arise when the organic signature is blurred, for pain patients are notoriously resistant to any suggestion that their pain is not purely organic in origin. Clinical experience has shown that the diagnosis and treatment of pain patients can be greatly facilitated by educating the patient about the complex nature of pain and by integrating the assessment of functional factors into the overall diagnostic work-up.
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It is possible that admission to hospital of methadone maintenance clients requiring treatment for pain with narcotics may result in an increase in methadone maintenance dose and affect subsequent rehabilitation of the client. The hospital admission itself may modify the subsequent outcome of the client. ⋯ Twenty-five had been admitted to the Surgical Service of Bellevue Hospital, New York City, for a variety of conditions and for periods ranging from 2 to 43 days; twenty-five were not admitted to the Hospital. Irrespective of whether or not large amounts of narcotic analgesics had been added to the maintenance methadone, patients were discharged on the same amounts of maintenance methadone as on admission and had eventual courses and outcomes similar to the control group when followed for a mean period of 20 months.