European journal of pain : EJP
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Hospitalized patients commonly undergo painful procedures, but little is known about care-related pain (CRP) in the overall population of inpatients. We conducted a cross-sectional 1-day survey to assess the prevalence and characteristics of CRP and its management in all units of a university hospital in Paris and determined the factors linked to severe CRP. ⋯ Our results of a survey of pain management in hospitalized patients relate to a wide variety of medical conditions and procedures. Health-care workers should be more systematic in managing CRP, and attention should be paid to patients at greatest risk of severe CRP.
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Memory of chronic, acute and experimental pain may be inaccurate, but the research findings are inconsistent. The main aim of the study was to compare the memory of three types of pain and their associated affect. ⋯ The results of the current study suggest that memory of pain and affect is influenced by the meaning and affective value of the pain experience. This may help us to understand why the previous research on the memory of pain were so diverse.
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The 9-item STarT-Back screening tool was developed in primary care patients with low back pain (LBP) to identify those at greatest risk for chronic pain and requiring targeted treatment. We conducted a secondary data analysis study to examine the performance of comparable questionnaire items in a sample of primary care patients with well-defined acute LBP. ⋯ A risk classification schema using the recommended cut-off scores with items similar to the STarT-Back in a primary care population with strictly defined acute LBP had limited ability to identify persons who progressed to chronic pain. The results suggest caution when applying the STarT-Back in patients with acute LBP and a need to consider a modification of its cut-offs.
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The underlying mechanisms of adaptations to pain are unclear. In order to explore whether central or peripheral mechanisms predominate, the effects of two centrally mediated phenomena - spatial summation of pain (SSP) and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) - were examined. The effect of the degree of painfulness, rather than absolute stimulation intensity, was also examined. ⋯ The mathematical models and the lack of effect of SSP on adaptation suggest that its dominant component is peripheral. Whereas relative painfulness determines whether pain adaptation or intensification occurs (probably a defence mechanism), absolute stimulation intensities influence the magnitude of the effect. Pain intensification is differentially affected by probe size, depending upon the occurrence of initial adaptation.
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Neuropathic pain, caused by a lesion or a disease affecting the somatosensory system, is one of the most common complications in diabetic patients. The purpose of this study is to identify genetic factors contributing to this type of pain in a general diabetic population. ⋯ This genome-wide association study on diabetic neuropathic pain suggests new evidence for the involvement of variants near GFRA2 with the disorder, which needs to be verified in an independent cohort and at the molecular level.