Articles: pain.
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In the treatment of cancer, particularly when pain is a serious symptom, psychological support of a patient is important and can, in fact, facilitate ongoing oncologic treatment. Hypnosis represents a psychological technique of great potency for reducing pain, increasing patients' life-enhancing attitudes, and helping patients deal with death and separation. Ultimately, the value of hypnosis lies in enabling an individual to potentiate inner capacities for creating psychological quiescence and physical comfort. For a suffering cancer patient, relief that comes from within can provide a much-needed experience of personal efficacy and strength.
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Comparative Study
A psychophysical analysis of experimential factors that selectively influence the affective dimension of pain.
A psychophysical analysis was made of experiential factors that influence the affective but not the sensory-discriminative dimension of pain. Seven subjects made cross-modality matching responses to several dimensions of their experience. Before each stimulus, they matched line lengths to their experienced desire to avoid pain (significance) and to their perceived likelihood of avoiding it (expectation). ⋯ In the other session, they simply focused on the pleasantness or unpleasantness of each sensation as it was experienced (affect-process responses). All subjects' affect-result responses were more positive (or less unpleasant) than affect-process responses. All of these results underscore the critical influence of expectations and the manner in which one evaluates sensations on affective responses to noxious stimulation.
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Clin. Pharmacol. Ther. · Apr 1980
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical TrialNefopam and propoxyphene in episiotomy pain.
To evaluate relative efficacy, safety, and time course of analgesia, nefopam (45 and 90 mg), a new centrally acting nonnarcotic analgesic, was compared with propoxyphene (65 mg) and placebo in a single oral dose, parallel, stratified, randomized, double-blind trial with 100 hospitalized postpartum women with medium or severe episiotomy pain. Using subjective reports as indices of response, patients rated pain intensity and side effects at periodic interviews for 6 hr. ⋯ Side effects included mild dizziness and hypothermia after nefopam and mild elevation of diastolic arterial pressure after nefopam and propoxyphene. Our results suggest that 45- and 90-mg doses of nefopam induced more analgesia than 65 mg propoxyphene in the relief of episiotomy pain.