Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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To explore the usefulness of the limb laterality recognition score as a clinical measure of phantom limb pain, regarding test-retest reliability and association of limb laterality recognition scores with phantom limb pain measures. ⋯ Limb laterality recognition accuracy/speed in the context condition had good test-retest reliability and correlated strongly with phantom limb pain frequency. Accuracy/speed limb laterality recognition ability relates to phantom limb pain and may be a valid clinical or research measure.
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Case Reports
Spinal Cord Injury During Attempted Cervical Interlaminar Epidural Injection of Steroids.
Interlaminar cervical epidural injections are commonly performed in the practice of interventional pain medicine. Injury to the spinal cord following injection into the substance of the cord is a known complication of this procedure, but it has rarely been reported and illustrated in the literature. ⋯ By recognizing the potential complications of a procedure, and by describing means of avoiding those complications, practice guidelines serve to reduce the risk, and thereby the incidence of complications. Deviation from established best practice guidelines reinstates risks of complications that can be avoided.
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Few studies have examined relations between one important aspect of spiritual/religious functioning-spiritual distress-and pain-related outcomes, and none has examined how spiritual distress and depression conjointly relate to chronic pain. The goal of the present study, then, was to examine veterans' spiritual distress as a predictor of two aspects of chronic pain, catastrophizing and interference, testing a mediational model of depression. ⋯ These results have implications for further research in spiritually integrated care as a component of holistic, integrative approaches to the management of chronic pain.
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Correlation between radiologic structural abnormalities and clinical symptoms in low back pain patients is poor. There is an unmet clinical need to image inflammation in pain conditions to aid diagnosis and guide treatment. Ferumoxytol, an ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide (USPIO) nanoparticle, is clinically used to treat iron deficiency anemia and showed promise in imaging tissue inflammation in human. We explored whether ferumoxytol can be used to identify tissue and nerve inflammation in pain conditions in animals and humans. ⋯ Ferumoxytol-enhanced MRI can identify tissue and nerve inflammation and may provide a promising diagnostic tool in assessing pain conditions in humans.