Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Continuous Pecto-Intercostal Fascial Block Provides Effective Analgesia in Patients Undergoing Open Cardiac Surgery: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
The optimal analgesia regimen after open cardiac surgery has been unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the beneficial effects of continuous pecto-intercostal fascial blocks (PIFB) initiated before surgery on outcomes after open cardiac surgery. ⋯ Bilateral continuous PIFB reduced the length of hospital stay and provided effective postoperative pain relief for 3 days.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
The Effect of Adding Dry Needling to Physical Therapy in the Treatment of Cervicogenic Headache: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
To compare the long-term effect of adding real or sham dry needling with conventional physiotherapy in cervicogenic headache. ⋯ Dry needling has a positive effect on pain and disability reduction, cervical range of motion, and deep cervical flexor muscles performance in patients with cervicogenic headache and active trigger points, although the clinical relevance of the results was small.
-
Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) can discriminate between healthy and chronic pain patients. However, its relationship with neurophysiological pain mechanisms is poorly understood. Brain oscillations measured by electroencephalography (EEG) might help gain insight into this complex relationship.
-
Cognitive dysfunction in fibromyalgia has become a key symptom considered by patients as more disabling than pain itself. Experimental evidence from neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies indicates that such cognitive impairments are especially robust when patients need to set in motion working memory processes, suggesting the existence of an altered functioning underlying the cerebral cortices of the frontoparietal memory network. However, the temporal dynamics of working memory subprocesses have not yet been explored in fibromyalgia. ⋯ The present results suggest that both encoding of information (as reflected by P2) and subsequently context updating and replacement (as seen in lower P3 amplitudes), as a part of working memory subprocesses, are impaired in fibromyalgia. Studying the temporal dynamics of working memory through the use of ERP methodology is a helpful approach to detect specific impaired cognitive mechanisms in this chronic pain syndrome. These new data could be used to develop more specific treatments adapted for each patient.