L5 Compression Fracture
Starting some weeks back, I was experiencing lower back pain. It wasn’t getting better. It was getting worse! I report anything out of the ordinary to the research team (I’m in a phase I clinical trial), and had been doing so with regard to this ailment. Since the pain was only getting worse over time, … (Source: beth's myeloma blog)
Source: beth's myeloma blog - July 25, 2022 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Beth Tags: Myeloma CT Scan fluoroscopy fracture PET Scan Spinal Compression Fracture Source Type: blogs
Biopsychological pain management is not enough
I recently read a preprint of an editorial for Pain, the IASP journal. It was written by Prof Michael Nicholas, and the title reads “The biopsychosocial model of pain 40 years on: time for a reappraisal?” The paper outlines when and how pain became conceptualised within a biopsychosocial framework by the pioneers of interprofessional pain management: John Loeser (1982) and Gordon Waddell (1984). Nicholas points out the arguments against a biopsychosocial model with some people considering that despite it being a “holistic” framework, it often gets applied in a biomedical and psychological way. In ot...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - July 17, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Back pain Chronic pain Coping strategies Interdisciplinary teams Low back pain Motivation Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Psychology Science in practice Therapeutic approaches biopsychosocial pain management Research Source Type: blogs
Inside Vida Health ’s Move Into Musculoskeletal Care
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
In the ‘point solution versus platform’ debate, mark another score for integration as Vida Health jumps into the musculoskeletal (MSK) care space. This is a move we’ve seen before among the digital health chronic condition management set (remember when Omada acquired Physera, Dario Health acquired Upright, and everyone was waiting to see if Livongo would make a play for Sword or Hinge?) so why is Vida just jumping in now?
Dr. Patrick Carroll, Vida Health’s Chief Medical Officer, lets us in on the strategy behind the startup’s move into the MSK space and what it signals about h...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 12, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Health Tech Health Technology Jessica DaMassa WTF Health Jess DaMassa MSK musculoskeletal care Patrick Carroll vida health Source Type: blogs
Scopes, roles, interprofessional practice and person-centred healthcare
A topic that almost immediately gets my hackles up is the one of scopes and roles in pain management and rehabilitation. It’s like “Oooh but that’s MY stuff, get out of it!” and I can see Gollum saying “my preciousssss”…
I trained and graduated in 1984. As a raw newbie occupational therapist I couldn’t articulate much of what my profession brought to healthcare, except that I knew “doing”, “activities” or “occupation” was important to human wellbeing, and that I’d been trained to analyse these. I’ve learned a lot since then a...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - July 10, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Assessment Clinical reasoning Interdisciplinary teams Professional topics Research Science in practice Chronic pain Health healthcare interprofessional pain management teamwork Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Underfunding Research Of Female Health Leaves Huge Amounts Of Money On The Table
“Did you know that at least one-third of women have lower back pain before their periods every month, and yet, nobody seems to fully understand why?” – asked a Medical Futurist team member a little while ago. The question led to a discussion about the differences in research, funding and understanding of male-only and female-only health issues, and consequently, to this article.
It is a well-known fact that some diseases or conditions dominantly affect one gender or the other. There are the trivial ones, like prostate cancer or ovarian, cervical, uterine cancers. But there is a long list of diseases and condit...
Source: The Medical Futurist - May 12, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andrea Koncz Tags: TMF Future of Medicine Healthcare Policy Medical Education women female health under-reseached gender gap in healthcare Source Type: blogs
Rehab fails: What goes wrong in pain rehabilitation (1)
Well obviously I’m not going to cover everything that goes wrong – and certainly not in one post! But inspired by some conversations I’ve had recently, I thought I’d discuss some of the common #fails we do in rehabilitation. Things that might explain why people with pain are thought to be “unmotivated” or “noncompliant” – because if the rehab doesn’t ‘work’ of course it’s the person with pain who’s at fault, right? So for today, here goes.
Starting at the wrong intensity
One of the main things that happens when someone’s in pain...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 20, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Cognitive behavioral therapy Cognitive skills Motivation Occupational therapy Pain conditions Physiotherapy Psychology Resilience/Health Science in practice biop Source Type: blogs
Making sense of pain
It’s been said many times, so many times I can’t locate the originator of the saying “humans are meaning-making machines” – no more so than when a person experiences pain. Whether it’s a stubbed toe, sprained ankle, thundering headache – or, in my case, weird and ongoing widespread body pain AKA fibromyalgia – we would like to make sense of what’s going on. And mostly we tell simple stories about what we were doing, what happened to the body and that’s that.
In the case of weird or persistent pains the challenge becomes harder. The original story might not fit ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 6, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Research Resilience/Health pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 28th 2022
In conclusion, as BMI and waist circumference are related to elevations of immune markers in the IL-6 pathway, chronic inflammation might be an important mediator of the relationship between BMI and frailty.
Fat Tissue Becomes Dysfunctional with Age as Mitochondria Falter
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/02/fat-tissue-becomes-dysfunctional-with-age-as-mitochondria-falter/
Mitochondria are effectively power plants, hundreds of them working in every cell to produce chemical energy store molecules to power cellular processes. Mitochondrial function declines with age, unfortunately, for underlying r...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 27, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Stem Cell Therapies for Intervertebral Disc Degeneration
Stem cell therapies, and cell therapies in general, have tremendous promise in treating age-related conditions, particularly those that lead to structural damage in the body, such as degenerative disc disease. While animal studies have produced very interesting results, these therapies have yet to achieve more than initial goals in clinical practice, however. Hematopoietic stem cell transplants work well for the uses they are put to, albeit while being a comparatively stressful, higher risk procedure. Immunotherapies based on cell transplants are quite well advanced in the cancer field. First generation mesenchymal stem ce...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 22, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Experiential avoidance – and persistent pain
Most of us will recognise that when we experience a pain, we firstly notice where it is, and the sensory qualities of it. We automatically make judgements about that pain – some of this judgement is about whether we recognise this pain (have we had it before?), some is about whether it’s important enough to interrupt what we’re doing (should I drop this hot cup of coffee, or can I hold onto it long enough to place the cup carefully on the bench), and some is about how we feel emotionally (yes, swearing is common when we smack our thumb with a hammer!).
In our response to acute pain, we often want to a...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - January 23, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Assessment Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Research Science in practice Therapeutic approaches pain management Source Type: blogs
7 causes of low back pain
The New Year is a typical time for resolutions, and one of the most common ones is to get healthier. For many of us, a common stumbling block is dealing with low back pain. As a rehabilitation medicine physician, my focus is nonoperative spine care within one of the top orthopedic practices in the country.Read more …7 causes of low back pain originally appeared inKevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 1, 2022 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/madhu-singh" rel="tag" > Madhu Singh, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions Orthopedics Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Making first contact: What to do with all that information! Part 4
In the previous few posts on what to do with all that assessment information I’ve talked about generating a formulation to guide treatment, and a little about how teams might work together to generate one. This post is a little different because I want to situation the discussion around the ultimate aim of therapy.
I usually work with people who have long-standing pain that hasn’t changed much and doesn’t seem to be disappearing. I’m not a nihilist, but I do wonder if clinicians are trying too hard to “change pain” when the body doesn’t seem to respond all that much to whatever...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 12, 2021 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Assessment Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Pain conditions Physiotherapy Psychology Science in practice Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Click Therapeutics raises further $52M to build up digital therapeutics pipeline for depression, insomnia, smoking cessation and more
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With Sanofi still on board, Click Therapeutics closes $52M series B for digital therapeutics in depression, chronic pain and more (Fierce Biotech):
Another medtech developer’s plans to create digital therapeutics to treat a wide range of illnesses are clicking into place, thanks to a third multimillion-dollar investment in Click Therapeutics in barely a year.
Click has already validated and begun the commercial launch of its first product, Clickotine, a mobile software program for smoking cessation … Several more of Click’s app-based therapeutics—all of which will require a physician’s prescription a...
Source: SharpBrains - November 4, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Technology & Innovation acute coronary syndrome app-based therapeutics chronic pain Click Therapeutics Clickadian Clickheart Clickotine cognitive cognitive-exercises depression digital therapeutics FDA cleara Source Type: blogs
Pain – or pain-related disability?
I’m struck at how often clinicians focus on pain intensity when how much pain intrudes on life matters more. I wonder whether new therapists might not have read some of the old studies looking at the relationship between pain intensity and disability – because while there is a relationship there, it’s not nearly as strong as we might think.
Let’s define a couple of terms first: pain is, I think most of us can agree, “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage”. (click for full definition and not...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - October 3, 2021 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
