Pain physician
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Epidural steroid injections are widely used to treat spinal and radiating pain. However, crystal formation has recently been reported in mixtures of ropivacaine and nonparticulate steroids, commonly used in epidural steroid injections. ⋯ The combination of ropivacaine and betamethasone should be avoided because of their physicochemical instability. Combinations of ropivacaine and dexamethasone should be administered cautiously because they are more physicochemically stable than combinations of ropivacaine and betamethasone.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
The Safety and Effectiveness of Orthobiologic Injections for Discogenic Chronic Low Back Pain: A Multicenter Prospective, Crossover, Randomized Controlled Trial with 12 Months Follow-up.
Chronic low back pain is one of the most common causes of disability, affecting more than 600 million people worldwide with major social and economic costs. Current treatment options include conservative, surgical, and minimally invasive interventional treatment approaches. Novel therapeutic treatment options continue to develop, targeting the biological cascades involved in the degenerative processes to prevent invasive spinal surgical procedures. Both intradiscal platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and bone marrow concentrate (BMC) applications have been introduced as promising regenerative treatment procedures. ⋯ This is the only human lumbar disc study that evaluates both PRP and BMC in the same study and compares it to placebo. PRP and BMC were found to be superior to placebo in improving pain and function; however, larger randomized clinical trials are needed to answer further questions on the comparative effectiveness of various biologics as well as to identify outcome differences specific to disc pathology.
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Splanchnic nerve neurolysis (SNN) is commonly used as an alternative pain control technique to celiac plexus neurolysis (CPN) in patients with distortion of anatomy, but the analgesic effect and relative risks of the 2 procedures remain controversial in general condition. ⋯ Our evidence supports that the analgesic effect of SNN is equivalent to that of CPN, independent of changes in the anatomical structure of the abdominal nerve plexus. SNN requires less use of opioids at 2 months and does not show greater improvement in pain burden compared to CPN.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Motor Control Exercise Modulates the Neural Plasticity of the Default Mode Network in Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain.
Motor control exercise (MCE) effectively alleviates nonspecific chronic low back pain (CLBP), but the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are poorly understood. ⋯ These findings demonstrate that MCE may alleviate CLBP symptoms in patients by modifying information transmission from the default mode network to the left frontoparietal network.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Comparison of Spinoglenoid Versus Suprascapular Notch Approaches for Ultrasound-Guided Distal Suprascapular Nerve Blocks for Shoulder Pain: A Prospective Randomized Trial.
Distal suprascapular nerve blocks (SSNB) can be performed at the level of the suprascapular notch (the preferred site) or at the level of the spinoglenoid notch. ⋯ Both distal SSNB approaches significantly improved pain and disability scores in patients with chronic shoulder pain, with no observable differences in the short-to-medium term. SSNB performed at the level of the spinoglenoid notch is therefore not inferior in efficacy and safety to SSNB performed at the level of the suprascapular notch.