Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain
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Research suggests that the prognosis of chronic nonspecific low back pain is poor when there is an alteration in the central pain processing pathway. This alteration creates a cascade of events, leading to poor outcomes. An overview of the predictors which increase this heightened pain perception is needed. ⋯ This review identified the predictors for altered central pain modulation in chronic nonspecific low back pain. This alteration could be responsible for the suspected poor outcomes even post treatment. Furthermore, the knowledge of predictors could potentially aid the therapist in planning a treatment regime when poor outcomes are suspected.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Pain Modulation Induced by Electronic Wrist-ankle Acupuncture: A Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy Study.
As a new technology, electronic wrist-ankle acupuncture (E-WAA) combines the advantages of wrist-ankle acupuncture and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, but the analgesic effect and mechanism need to be clarified. The purpose of this study was to identify the pain modulation caused by E-WAA by evaluating the response of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) from the perspective of neurophysiology. ⋯ The results demonstrated that the E-WAA have a great analgesic effect. The FP and DLPFC were relative to the analgesia neuromodulation induced by the E-WAA.
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Anterior cutaneous nerve entrapment syndrome (ACNES) is a painful condition that can be refractory in a small percentage of patients. Abdominal pain caused by thoracic nerve entrapment in the abdominal wall characterizes ACNES. In the small number of refractory patients to all standard treatments, medication overuse and abuse are serious problems. Dorsal root ganglion (DRG) stimulation might be a good treatment to improve pain scores and to lower medication use. ⋯ This case series shows that DRG stimulation might be a very good treatment for refractory ACNES.