Pain Medicine

OBJECTIVE: Low back pain is the leading cause of worldwide disability, with lumbosacral radiculopathy accounting for over one-third of these cases. There are limited data on the relationship between etiologies and lumbosacral radiculopathy, and it is unknown whether specific causes predict treatment outcomes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND SUBJECTS: This study explores patient-reported etiologies for lumbosacral radiculopathy in a chronic pain clinic between January 2007 and December 2015 and examines whether these causes affected epidural steroid injection outcomes...

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BACKGROUND: Treatments for joint pain and dysfunction focus on restoration of joint motion, improvement in pain and a return to the previous level of the patient's daily activity. Therapeutic ultrasound is a noninvasive modality widely utilized in the management of musculoskeletal disorders. The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic ultrasound in the management of patients with knee, shoulder and hip pain. METHODS: Using PRISMA guidelines, a search of the PubMed, CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library), Web of Science and Scopus databases was performed to retrieve randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated therapeutic ultrasound (continuous and pulsed) in patients with chronic knee, shoulder and hip pain...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to assess the feasibility of digital perioperative behavioral pain medicine intervention in breast cancer surgery and evaluate its impact on pain catastrophizing, pain, and opioid cessation after surgery. DESIGN AND SETTING: A randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted at Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA, USA) comparing a digital behavioral pain medicine intervention ("My Surgical Success" [MSS]) with digital general health education (HE)...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to describe the preoperative and postoperative experiences of spine surgery from the patient's perspective to help inform behavioral health services provided before, during, and after hospitalization. SETTING: Single urban academic tertiary care hospital. METHODS: Semistructured interviews with 14 adults who underwent spine surgery. Interview transcriptions were analyzed using content analysis by three investigators to identify emergent themes...

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: Pain and opioid use are highly prevalent, leading for calls to include nonpharmacological options in pain management, including complementary and integrative health (CIH) therapies. More than 2,000 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and many systematic reviews have been conducted on CIH therapies, making it difficult to easily understand what type of CIH therapy might be effective for what type of pain. Here we synthesize the strength of the evidence for four types of CIH therapies on pain: acupuncture, therapeutic massage, mindfulness techniques, and tai chi...

OBJECTIVE: To compare the effectiveness of a biobehavioral approach with and without orthopedic manual physical therapy on the intensity and frequency of pain in patients diagnosed with nonspecific chronic low back pain. METHODS: A single-blind randomized controlled trial. Fifty patients were randomly allocated into two groups: one group received biobehavioral therapy with orthopedic manual physical therapy, and the other group received only biobehavioral therapy...

OBJECTIVE: To determine if the perioperative administration of valproic acid reduces the incidence of chronic pain three months after amputation or revision surgery. DESIGN: Multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. SETTING: Academic, military, and veteran medical centers. SUBJECTS: One hundred twenty-eight patients undergoing amputation or amputation revision surgery at Duke University Hospital, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, or the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center for either medical disease or trauma...

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OBJECTIVE: Pain is one of the most frequent nonmotor impairments in Parkinson's disease (PD) and is hypothesized to be associated with altered nociceptive pain processing. Our aims were to investigate differences in widespread pressure pain sensitivity between PD patients with and without pain and healthy controls and to assess the relationship of health-related quality of life and sleep quality with pressure pain sensitivity. METHODS: Nineteen PD patients with pain (12 men, age = 68 ± 9 years), 19 PD patients without pain (11 men, age = 69 ± 8 years), and 19 matched controls participated...

OBJECTIVE: Chronic pain is a multidimensional experience associated with psychosocial (e.g., pain-related beliefs and pain coping responses) and spiritual factors. Spirituality is a universal aspect of the human experience that has been hypothesized to impact pain experience via its effects on pain, physical/psychological function, resilience and pain-related beliefs, and pain coping responses. However, research evaluating the associations between measures of spirituality and measures of pain and function in individuals with chronic pain is limited...

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OBJECTIVES: This research compared health care resource use (HCRU) and costs for pharmacotherapy prescribing that was adherent vs nonadherent to published pain management guidelines. Conditions included osteoarthritis (OA) and gout (GT) for nociceptive/inflammatory pain, painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (pDPN) and post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) for neuropathic pain, and fibromyalgia (FM) for sensory hypersensitivity pain. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study used claims from MarketScan Commercial and Medicare Databases identifying adults newly diagnosed with OA, GT, pDPN, PHN, or FM during July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2013, with 12-month continuous coverage before and after initial (index) diagnosis...

OBJECTIVE: Little is known about the perceptions and attitudes of participants who volunteer in studies involving authorized deception. Thus, this cross-sectional pilot study measured, for the first time, the perceptions about participation in an authorized-deception placebo analgesia study in chronic pain patients with fibromyalgia and assessed whether their perceptions differed from healthy controls. METHODS: An anonymous survey with questions about trust in research and willingness to participate in future research involving deception was mailed to participants in both groups after completion of the parent study...