Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain
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Pain and neuropathic symptoms impact quality of life of patients with cancer. To obtain more insight in the prevalence, severity, and treatment of neuropathic symptoms in patients with cancer and their interference with daily activities, we conducted a cross-sectional study at the outpatient clinic of a Dutch university hospital. ⋯ This study shows that over 40% of the patients with moderate to severe pain also have neuropathic symptoms, causing increased interference with daily activities. Most of these patients do not receive adjuvant analgesics. There is a need to improve management of neuropathic symptoms in patients with cancer.
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Efficacy, Safety, and Predictors of Intradiscal Methylene Blue Injection for Discogenic Low Back Pain: Results of a Multicenter Prospective Clinical Series.
Prospective clinical study of intradiscal methylene blue injection for the treatment of lumbar discogenic pain. ⋯ Our findings of 40% positive respondents, and no complications, give reason to set up a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, trial.
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Patients who suffer from migraines often report impaired quality of life. Occipital nerve stimulation (ONS) is a novel treatment modality for migraines, although few systematic reviews have evaluated whether this therapy is efficacious. The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of ONS for treating migraine through a literature review. ⋯ Improvement in the migraine disability assessment (MIDAS) score was more dramatic than improvement in the SF-36 score at follow-up. The mean complication incidence of ONS was 66% for the reviewed studies. Future clinical studies should optimize and standardize the ONS intervention process and identify the relationship among the surgical process, efficacy, and complications resulting from the procedure.
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Review the current evidence-based status of pulsed radiofrequency (PRF) treatment for patients with shoulder pain based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to provide a comprehensive analysis and a balanced view of the strengths and weaknesses of this treatment. ⋯ The use of PRF treatment for patients with shoulder pain was observed to result in good clinical efficacy for at least 12 weeks with no complication reported. However, it is still unclear from the currently available publications whether PRF is superior to other treatment techniques such as intra-articular corticosteroid and conventional transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.
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A range of outcome measures across various domains are used to evaluate change following an intervention in clinical trials on chronic neuropathic pain (NeP). However, to capture a real change in the variable of interest, the psychometric properties of a particular measure should demonstrate appropriate methodological quality. Various outcome measures in the domains of pain and physical functioning have been used in the literature for NeP, for which individual properties (eg, reliability/validity) have been reported. To date, there is no definitive synthesis of evidence on the psychometric properties of those outcome measures; thus, the aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the methodological quality [COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) guidelines] of studies that evaluated psychometric properties of pain and physical functioning outcome measures used for NeP. ⋯ Although a variety of pain and physical functioning outcome measures have been reported in the literature, few have demonstrate methodologically strong psychometric properties. Thus, future research is required to further investigate the psychometric properties of existing pain and physical functioning outcome measures used for clinical and research purposes.