Articles: pain-measurement.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Randomized, double blinded comparative trial of intradermal injections of lignocaine versus N-saline around the knee to relieve pain in patients awaiting total knee replacement.
We report a randomized, double-blinded comparative study assessing the efficacy of local anesthetic with N-saline intradermal blocks around the knee to reduce pain and improve patient satisfaction while waiting for a total knee joint replacement. ⋯ Thirty-two of 34 patients attended at 1-week assessment, 24 (75%) felt that they were improved, and 8 (25%) considered they were unchanged or worse. In both the saline and lignocaine groups, 12 of 16 patients felt that they had improved. N-saline proved as effective as lignocaine in reducing knee pain when injected intradermally. Seventy-five percent of patients were improved at 1 week.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
How reliable is pain as the fifth vital sign?
Although many health care organizations require routine pain screening (eg, "5th vital sign") with the 0 to 10 numeric rating scale (NRS), its accuracy has been questioned; here we evaluated its accuracy and potential causes for error. ⋯ Though moderately accurate, the outpatient "5th vital sign" is less accurate than under ideal circumstances. Personalizing assessment is a common clinical practice but may affect the performance of research tools such as the NRS adopted for routine use.
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Paediatric anaesthesia · May 2009
Randomized Controlled TrialThe effect of postoperative fasting on vomiting in children and their assessment of pain.
Mandatory postoperative food intake has been shown to increase nausea and vomiting, and so postoperative fasting has become common practice even if patients request food or drink. ⋯ Postoperative fasting did not reduce the incidence of vomiting after general anesthesia in children when compared with a liberal regimen. Furthermore, the ability to eat and drink at will decrease the bothersome aspects of pain and lead to happier patients.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Assessment of pain quality in a clinical trial of gabapentin extended release for postherpetic neuralgia.
To replicate and extend previous research concerning the validity and utility of using pain quality measures in clinical trials. ⋯ The results provide further support for the importance of assessing specific pain qualities as outcomes in clinical trials. The findings may also be used by clinicians for identifying those patients for whom G-ER may be particularly effective; that is, patients with postherpetic neuralgia presenting with pain described as sharp, dull, sensitive, or itchy.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
A new instrument for pain assessment in the immediate postoperative period.
Perceptual-cognitive impairment after general anaesthesia may affect the ability to reliably report pain severity with the standard visual analog scale (VAS). To minimise these limitations, we developed 'PAULA the PAIN-METER' (PAULA): it has five coloured emoticon faces on the forefront, it is twice as long as a standard VAS scale, and patients use a slider to mark their pain experience. ⋯ The values obtained with PAULA showed less variance than those obtained with the standard VAS, even at the first assessment, where only 23% of the patients had regained their visual acuity. Furthermore, the deviations of the absolute VAS values in individual patients for each descriptive pain term were significantly smaller with PAULA than with the standard VAS.