Articles: pain-management.
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In the midst of a push for legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in the United States, the Catholic healing tradition should provide good palliative care and support for dying patients. Catholic healthcare institutions can have a counterinfluence on the euthanasia movement if they strive to relieve all forms of pain-physical, psychological, social, and spiritual. Care givers must adapt their pain management methods to diverse groups of patients and their needs. ⋯ Truthful communication lies at the heart of the therapeutic relationship. Healthcare institutions can likewise organize themselves internally to offer optimal support programs for those who are dying, their families, and their care givers. Necessary ingredients for a comprehensive approach include integrated treatment plans, hospitable environments, policies on advance directives and collaborative decision making, ethics committees that are well versed in end-of-life issues, education programs, and a hospice philosophy of care.
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Tijdschr Kindergeneeskd · Apr 1993
[Pediatric Pain Groups. Management related to pain in hospitalized children].
By means of multidisciplinary Pediatric Pain Groups in hospitals possibilities are created to implement recent knowledge about prevention of pain and relief of pain in children. The activities of these groups are amongst others: developing and testing pain protocols, applying systematic pain assessment and giving information about pediatric pain. These activities result in a reduction of pain in children and in prevention of needless suffering of pain in hospitalized children.
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J Assoc Nurses AIDS Care · Apr 1993
ReviewPain characteristics and their management in persons with AIDS.
Discussion of pain problems in persons with AIDS has been limited in medical and nursing literature, yet pain is a major source of suffering and concern for patients. Common pain characteristics are described in 100 persons with CDC-defined AIDS, using the 1987 definition. ⋯ Treatment responses were individualized, with drug users requiring more frequent use of opiates. General treatment strategies are suggested with special emphasis on the unique needs of PWAs.
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To determine whether chronic pain patients' beliefs and attributions about pain control are amenable to change in a short-term inpatient multidisciplinary pain management program. ⋯ Chronic non-terminal pain patients' beliefs about pain and attributions of pain control are amenable to change in a short-term inpatient multidisciplinary pain management program. These results suggest that an intensive multidisciplinary program involving psychotherapy might be more effective in treating chronic pain patients similar to those in this study than outpatient treatment without psychotherapy.
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Animal experiments have unequivocally demonstrated peripheral antinociceptive effects of opioids in inflamed tissue. Exogenous mu-, delta- und kappa-agonists can produce such effects. Opioid receptors are present on peripheral terminals of primary afferent neurons and their endogenous ligands are produced and contained in resident immune cells within the inflamed tissue. ⋯ A small number of clinical studies has examined the peripheral analgesic effects of opioids. Their results are equivocal so far. In view of the predominant role of the inflammatory process in the manifestation of peripheral opioid effects, the postoperative situation seems to be particularly worthwhile to study.