Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine
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Review
Central sensitization, chronic pain, and other symptoms: Better understanding, better management.
Central sensitization, a pathophysiologic process in which the central nervous system undergoes changes that alter its processing of pain and other sensory stimuli, may be the mechanism underlying various conditions in which patients have unexplained pain and fatigue. Patients frequently misunderstand the cause of their symptoms and pursue unnecessary evaluations and treatments. Clinicians have a pivotal role in decreasing this misunderstanding by providing patient education, which can affect perception, management, functional status, and quality of life.
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Although uncommon, colovesical fistula creates significant morbidity, and many patients wait months to receive a correct diagnosis and treatment. Most cases are in older men who have diverticular disease, Crohn disease, cancer, or iatrogenic injury, and some of these associations may have occurred in the patient's distant past and may not be immediately apparent. Since the incidence of diverticulitis in elderly patients is increasing and, in a separate trend, more patients are undergoing bladder instrumentation, we need to suspect this diagnosis when evaluating any patient with urinary tract infection, especially a man with prolonged symptoms refractory to conventional treatments.