Articles: pain-clinics.
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Massage therapy is an evidence-based approach for pain management. Information regarding its utilization in the Military Health System (MHS) is lacking. The goal of this study is to evaluate massage therapy utilization patterns across the MHS to include who receives (patient characteristics and diagnoses) and provides (e.g., massage therapists) massage therapy and where (e.g., clinic type). ⋯ While massage therapy codes are documented frequently, massage therapists do not commonly provide massage therapy relative to nonmassage therapist providers. Access to massage therapists may be stymied by both lack of massage therapists and need for tertiary pain management referrals to access massage therapist-delivered care. Future research will leverage a health equity framework to (1) evaluate accessibility to massage therapy provided by massage therapists and (2) evaluate real-world evidence of massage therapy effectiveness.
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Shoulder stabilization surgery is common among military personnel, causing severe acute postoperative pain that may contribute to the development of chronic pain, thereby reducing military readiness. Battlefield Acupuncture (BFA) has shown promise as a non-pharmaceutical intervention for acute postoperative pain. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of BFA combined with standard physical therapy on pain, self-reported mood, self-reported improvement, and medication use in patients after shoulder stabilization surgery. ⋯ ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04094246. Registered September 16, 2019, http://clinicaltrials.gov/NCT04094246.
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Chronic pain (CP) significantly impacts emotional and physical well-being and overall quality of life across diverse populations in the United States (U.S.). Notably, underrepresented minoritized (URM) groups, such as Hispanic/Latinx youth, may experience disproportionate effects due to health disparities and lack of access to quality healthcare. However, this remains understudied. This study aims to examine the association between CP and its related psychosocial factors- depressive and anxiety symptoms, and pain catastrophizing- in Hispanic/Latinx youth, as compared to Non-Hispanic White (NHW) youth. ⋯ Our results suggested that for NHW youth with CP, greater tendencies toward catastrophizing and experiences of anxiety may more strongly contribute to depressive symptoms, when compared to their Hispanic/Latinx youth counterparts. Further investigation of pain-coping mechanisms among Hispanic/Latinx youth and other youth from historically marginalized populations (e.g., racial/ethnic minoritized groups) will help advance clinical understanding of sociocultural variability in links between pain-related psychosocial outcomes in the CP experience.
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Historically in medicine and beyond, the understanding of and treatment of pain is based on finding tissue injury. The fact that for chronic pain, there often is no (longer) any traceable tissue injury, in combination with the fact that pain essentially is a private experience, poses a challenge for clinical communication. This paper therefore examines how pain is linguistically and interactionally constructed as invisible. ⋯ The discussion explores how on these three levels, notions of the abnormal or deviant body come into play, in which patients and health professionals complexly construct pain both as not normal (i.e. not a neutral or desirable state of being), while, at the same time, the lack of traceable tissue injury is constructed as medically normal for chronic pain. This also shows how patients and healthcare providers often orient to the stigma around chronic pain.