Journal of pain research
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2012
Dorsal root ganglion - a potential new therapeutic target for neuropathic pain.
A regional approach can protect our patients from often unacceptable adverse effects produced by systematically applied drugs. Regional therapeutic approaches, as well as interventions at the level of the peripheral nervous system and particularly the dorsal root ganglion (DRG), represent an alternative to the systemic application of therapeutic agents. This article provides an overview of DRG anatomical peculiarities, explains why the DRG is an important therapeutic target, and how animal models of targeted drug delivery can help us in the translation of basic research into clinical practice.
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2012
Efficacy profile of liposome bupivacaine, a novel formulation of bupivacaine for postsurgical analgesia.
Liposome bupivacaine is a novel formulation of the local anesthetic bupivacaine, designed to provide prolonged postsurgical analgesia. This analysis examined pooled efficacy data as reflected in cumulative pain scores from 10 randomized, double-blind liposome bupivacaine clinical studies in which the study drug was administered via local wound infiltration. ⋯ Based on this integrated analysis of multiple efficacy measures, liposome bupivacaine appears to be a potentially useful therapeutic option for prolonged reduction of postsurgical pain in soft tissue and orthopedic surgeries.
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2012
Intensive interdisciplinary outpatient pain management program for chronic back pain: a pilot study.
Chronic back pain is relatively resistant to unimodal therapy regimes. The aim of this study was to introduce and evaluate the short-term outcome of a three-week intensive multidisciplinary outpatient program for patients with back pain and sciatica, measured according to decrease of functional impairment and pain. ⋯ This paper describes the organization and short-term outcome of an intensive multidisciplinary program for chronic back pain on an outpatient basis provided by our orthopedic department, with clinically significant results.
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Surgical injury can frequently lead to chronic pain. Despite the obvious importance of this problem, the first publications on chronic pain after surgery as a general topic appeared only a decade ago. This study tests the hypothesis that chronic postsurgical pain was, and still is, represented insufficiently. ⋯ Chronic postsurgical pain is still a neglected topic, except for pain after herniorrhaphy. The change in the attitude toward chronic postsurgical pain is the important first step in the approach to this problem.
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Journal of pain research · Jan 2012
Patients with persistent pain after breast cancer surgery show both delayed and enhanced cortical stimulus processing.
Women who undergo breast cancer surgery have a high risk of developing persistent pain. We investigated brain processing of painful stimuli using electroencephalograms (EEG) to identify event-related potentials (ERPs) in patients with persistent pain after breast cancer treatment. ⋯ These results show that treatment and persistent pain have opposite effects on cortical responsiveness.