Articles: acute-pain.
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Pain management is a core competency of hospital medicine, and effective acute pain management should be a goal for all hospital medicine providers. The prevalence of opioid use in the United States, both therapeutic and non-medical in origin, has dramatically increased over the past decade. ⋯ In this review, we provide an evidence-based approach to appropriate and safe use of opioid analgesics in treating acute pain in hospitalized patients who are opioid-dependent. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2017;12:375-379.
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With the increasing societal awareness of the prevalence and impact of acute pain, there is a need to develop an acute pain classification system that both reflects contemporary mechanistic insights and helps guide future research and treatment. Existing classifications of acute pain conditions are limiting, with a predominant focus on the sensory experience (eg, pain intensity) and pharmacologic consumption. Consequently, there is a need to more broadly characterize and classify the multidimensional experience of acute pain. ⋯ Significant numbers of patients still suffer from significant acute pain, despite the advent of modern multimodal analgesic strategies. Mismanaged acute pain has a broad societal impact as significant numbers of patients may progress to suffer from chronic pain. An acute pain taxonomy provides a much-needed standardization of clinical diagnostic criteria, which benefits clinical care, research, education, and public policy. For the purposes of the present taxonomy, acute pain is considered to last up to seven days, with prolongation to 30 days being common. The current understanding of acute pain mechanisms poorly differentiates between acute and chronic pain and is often insufficient to distinguish among many types of acute pain conditions. Given the usefulness of the AAPT multidimensional framework, the AAAPT undertook a similar approach to organizing various acute pain conditions.
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Case Reports Randomized Controlled Trial
The Use of Ketamine for Acute Treatment of Pain: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial.
Pain is one of the most common reasons for emergency department (ED) visits in the United States. Ketamine is a sedative with N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonism. Recent literature has suggested that the use of subdissociative dose ketamine (SDDK) may be safe and effective for acute pain. ⋯ When used as an adjunct, SDDK administered at 0.3 mg/kg over 15 min resulted in safe and effective analgesia for ≤30 min in patients who presented with acute pain in the ED.
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Observational Study
A Prospective Study of Chronic Pain after Thoracic Surgery.
The goal of this study was to detect the predictors of chronic pain at 6 months after thoracic surgery from a comprehensive evaluation of demographic, psychosocial, and surgical factors. ⋯ There was no difference in the incidence and severity of chronic pain at 6 months in patients undergoing thoracotomy versus thoracoscopy. Unlike other postsurgical pain conditions, none of the preoperative psychosocial measurements were associated with chronic pain after thoracic surgery.
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Nonopioid analgesic drugs may interfere with platelet inhibition by aspirin. Recent in vitro and clinical studies in patients with cardiovascular disease have suggested that this pharmacodynamic interaction may also occur with dipyrone, a nonopioid analgesic popular in Europe, Asia and South America. ⋯ Dipyrone given for 5 days or longer blunts platelet inhibition by low-dose aspirin in the majority of recipients.