Clinical drug investigation
-
Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Adequacy assessment of oxycodone/paracetamol (acetaminophen) in multimodal chronic pain : a prospective observational study.
Multimodal pain is comprised of nociceptive/inflammatory and neuropathic components. Pharmacological pain therapies from different classes provide pain relief using different mechanistic actions; often a combination of such therapies provides more effective pain relief than monotherapy. To assess whether pain management is adequate requires a comprehensive pain scoring system. ⋯ The PMI was an effective tool for assessment of pain management efficacy. Oxycodone/paracetamol improved pain symptoms in the majority of compliant patients. In patients with neuropathic pain, rescue therapy with oxycodone/paracetamol showed a lesser, but significant, improvement of pain symptoms.
-
Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Standard therapy with opioids in chronic pain management : ORTIBER study.
Moderate to severe pain is commonly experienced by cancer and non-cancer patients. Although opioids are generally the most important drugs in chronic pain management, their use in Italy remains low. We designed a prospective open trial to assess the efficacy and safety of a standard therapy clinically available for a large range of patients. ⋯ Start therapy with IR morphine followed by conversion to SR opioid therapy could be implemented as a standard therapy to manage moderate to severe chronic pain in patients with cancer or non-cancer pain. ORamorph in TIBER study (ORTIBER).
-
Monotherapy with any class of antihypertensive drug effectively controls blood pressure (BP) in only about 50% of patients. Consequently, the majority of patients with hypertension require combined therapy with two or more medications. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness (systolic BP [SBP]/diastolic BP [DBP] control) and tolerability of the fixed-dose combination enalapril/nitrendipine 10 mg/20 mg administered as a single daily dose in hypertensive patients. ⋯ The rate of SBP/DBP control achieved demonstrates the effectiveness of the fixed-dose enalapril/nitrendipine 10 mg/20 mg combination administered as a single daily dose in patients with essential hypertension not adequately controlled with monotherapy or with any combination other than enalapril + nitrendipine. The proportion and type of adverse events reported were as expected and have already been described for both components of the enalapril/nitrendipine 10 mg/20 mg combination. These results confirm the effectiveness of a strategy based on a fixed-dose enalapril/nitrendipine 10 mg/20 mg combination in reducing BP and achieving BP control goals.
-
Multicenter Study
Prevalence and characterization of neuropathic pain in a primary-care setting in Spain: a cross-sectional, multicentre, observational study.
Different studies have shown pain to be one of the most frequent causes of health-care resource utilization, and a major public health concern because of its social repercussions. In Spain there are no recent data on the prevalence and management of neuropathic pain in the general primary-care setting. ⋯ The results of the present study show the high prevalence of neuropathic pain at the primary-care level in Spain. In addition, the data presented here point to a need to improve the management of outpatients with neuropathic pain in the Spanish primary-care setting, particularly in relation to the higher than recommended use of NSAIDs (which are not indicated for neuropathic pain) and the lower than recommended use of antiepileptic drugs with an analgesic indication for pain with a neuropathic component.