Current pain and headache reports
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A greater understanding of the mechanisms that produce chronic pain states has led to a search for novel agents with the potential to produce analgesia by directly modulating specific processes involved in the transduction, transmission, modulation, perception, and encoding of pain. It is hoped that compounds directed at these specific targets will produce better analgesics with an improved side-effect profile. ⋯ In addition, these compounds have demonstrated the ability to prevent the development of tolerance to opioid analgesic therapy. This has led to investigations of therapies that combine an opioid agonist with an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist.
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Chronic low back pain is one of the most common ailments in modern medicine, with as many as 79% of patients with acute pain continuing to suffer with chronic or recurrent low back pain 1 year after its onset. Lumbar epidural fibrosis and post-lumbar laminectomy syndrome are increasingly recognized as being responsible for persistent low back pain. ⋯ Epidural adhesiolysis with myeloscopy is an interventional technique based on the premise that the three-dimensional visualization of the contents of the epidural space provides the physician with the ability to directly visualize the structures, perform appropriate adhesiolysis, and administer drugs specifically to the target. This review describes pathophysiologic aspects, purposes and goals, rationale and indications, complications, and effectiveness of epidural lysis of adhesions with myeloscopy.
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2002
ReviewPsychiatric comorbidity in chronic daily headache: pathophysiology, etiology, and diagnosis.
Chronic daily headache is a challenge for clinical practitioners and researchers. Etiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of chronic daily headache present many questions that need answers. ⋯ Psychiatric comorbidity seems to be cross-related to each of these dimensions, although the meanings need to be drawn. Each domain is discussed, considering the status of knowledge and stressing the future lines of research.
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2002
ReviewBotulinum toxin for the treatment of musculoskeletal pain and spasm.
The impressive pain relief experienced by sufferers of dystonia and spasticity from intramuscular injections of botulinum toxin suggested that patients with other chronic, musculoskeletal pain conditions also may benefit. However, there have been relatively few placebo-controlled studies of botulinum toxin in such non-neurologic conditions as myofascial pain syndrome, chronic neck and low back pain, and fibromyalgia; the results of these studies have not been impressive. One explanation for the lack of positive findings may be the lack of clinically evident muscle spasms (overactivity), despite the presence of muscle tenderness, tightness, or trigger points. ⋯ Evidence from animal experiments supports this notion, and other data provide plausible physiologic mechanisms in the periphery and central nervous systems. These involve modulation of the activity of the neurotransmitters glutamate, substance P, calcitonin gene-related peptide, enkephalins, and others. However, even if botulinum toxin is firmly established as an analgesic, there is insufficient clinical evidence of its efficacy in treating non-neurologic, chronic, musculoskeletal pain conditions.
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There are many people who experience headaches that are independent of illness, injury, or hangover. Approximately 4% of the population suffer from headaches on a daily or near-daily basis. It is apparent that patients with chronic daily headache in community samples differ in important ways from patients with chronic daily headache in subspecialty clinics. In this manuscript, we review clinic-based data on risk factors for chronic daily headache and summarize the current data on the epidemiology of chronic daily headache.