The Clinical journal of pain
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To evaluate the prevalence of pain, how pain affects patients' lives, what treatments are being used, and the effectiveness of these pain treatments in ambulatory patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease. ⋯ Pain is an important problem in terms of its prevalence and impact on patients with HIV disease. Pain control in this patient population is inadequate. Clinicians should realize that pain can be present regardless of the duration of the disease and its severity. Patients need to be educated about the proper use of pain medications and helped to understand that pain medications will not "worsen their disease."
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The purpose of our study was to investigate whether Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 cluster solutions of chronic low-back pain patients would replicate those found in previous research with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. ⋯ These findings indicate that interpretations of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 should parallel those of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory for chronic low-back pain patients. They further suggest that the results of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-based studies are also applicable to Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2.
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To evaluate whether symptoms of emotional distress related to pain affect patients' use of pain coping strategies. Relations between anxiety responses, as assessed by the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale, and coping strategies, as assessed by the Coping Strategies Questionnaire, were examined. ⋯ These results show that different types of anxiety symptoms have differing relations with pain coping responses. Cognitive anxiety symptoms may interfere with coping, whereas physiological anxiety symptoms may enhance coping. Possible mechanisms and implications are discussed.
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This review tries to consolidate the literature on changes in serotonin and the importance of these changes for understanding headache pathogenesis and determining treatment. A model is presented that integrates previous serotonin studies and offers an explanation for apparent contradictions in the literature. ⋯ Serotonin plays an important role in the pathogenesis of headaches. Changes in serotonin may precede the vascular and muscular changes of migraine and tension-type headaches. The influence of serotonin on headaches explains a number of clinical situations that affect headache activity and the variety of classes of effective headache medications.
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To determine the intercorrelation between subjective disability, as assessed with the Pain Disability Index (PDI) and the Oswestry Disability Questionnaire (ODQ) and their correlation with visual analogue scale (VAS) pain intensity ratings. ⋯ The present results suggest that either the PDI or the percentage score PDI and also the even shorter-to-administer PDI factor 1 may be useful and reliable tests for the assessment of subjective disability in low back pain patients. As noted by the moderate intercorrelations with pain intensity scores, both the PDI and the ODQ address a broader concept of disability than that directly related to pain intensity.