Pain physician
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Use/misuse of the opioid combination hydrocodone-acetaminophen has been associated with permanent hearing loss. Although reports have been rare, this potential effect can have significant detrimental effect on patients' overall quality of life. To date, the ototoxic effect of hydrocodone alone has not been systematically investigated. ⋯ No ototoxic signal was observed for single-entity hydrocodone tablets at the dosages and treatment durations investigated. Key words: Audiologic monitoring, clinical trials, hydrocodone, opioids, ototoxicity monitoring, sensorineural hearing loss.
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Symptomatic headaches attributed to unruptured brain arteriovenous malformations (ubAVMs) are very common and affect patients' quality life, but multidisciplinary care of ubAVMs to improve symptomatic headache remains unclear. ⋯ Occipital ubAVM is more likely to present with migraine-like headache, while frontotemporal ubAVM tends to present with tension-type-like headache. The effectiveness of multidisciplinary care for ubAVM to improve headache has been shown, but the natural history of ubAVM patients with headache remains unclear.Key Words: Unruptured brain arteriovenous malformations, headache, headache improvement, natural history.
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Clinical Trial
Vitamin D Supplementation in Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain: An Open Label, Single Arm Clinical Trial.
Vitamin-D deficiency may possibly be related to chronic low back pain (CLBP). ⋯ Vitamin-D supplementation in deficient CLBP patients may lead to improvement in pain intensity and functional ability apart from normalization of the levels. Future controlled clinical trials are required to confirm the hypothesis.Key words: Vitamin D, deficiency, screening, low back pain, chronic, supplementation.
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Review Meta Analysis
Does Percutaneous Vertebroplasty or Balloon Kyphoplasty for Osteoporotic Vertebral Compression Fractures Increase the Incidence of New Vertebral Fractures? A Meta-Analysis.
Because of an aging population,osteoporotic vertebral fractures are becoming more frequent.Conservative therapy was considered the gold standard for treating osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures (OVCFs) in the past. Percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) or balloon kyphoplasty (BKP) as minimally invasive techniques are new treatments that are widely used for painful OVCFs. However, an increase in new vertebral compression fractures at non-treated levels following augmentation is of concern. There is no convincing evidence that new fractures are inevitable after augmentation compared to after conservative treatment, and it is still unclear whether further fractures are the consequence of augmentation or a result of the natural progression of osteoporosis. ⋯ Vertebral augmentation techniques, such as vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty, have been widely used to treat osteoporotic vertebral fractures in order to alleviate back pain and correct the deformity, and it has been frequently reported that many new vertebral fractures occurred after this operation. Our analysis did not reveal evidence of an increased risk of fracture of vertebral bodies, especially those adjacent to the treated vertebrae, following augmentation with either method compared with conservative treatment.Key words: Vertebroplasty, kyphoplasty, new osteoporotic compression vertebral fracture, meta-analysis.