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Ultrasound-guided Radiofrequency Lesioning of the Articular Branches of the Femoral Nerve for the Treatment of Chronic Post-arthroplasty Hip Pain.
CONCLUSIONS: Cooled (60°C) radiofrequency lesioning of the ABFN under ultrasound guidance is both an effective and minimally invasive intervention for chronic post-arthroplasty hip pain. Key words: Radiofrequency lesioning, articular branches, femoral nerve, post-arthoplasty, total hip arthoplasty, hip pain, chronic pain.
PMID: 28158168 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Pain Physician - January 31, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Kim DJ, Shen S, Hanna GM Tags: Pain Physician Source Type: research
Organizing principles: Classifying pain for healthcare, research | Pain Research Forum
Where does it hurt? How bad does it hurt? Why does it hurt? The many inconsistent and inadequate ways of sorting chronic pain by anatomy, severity, and associated medical conditions are impeding the health and well-being of patients, optimal medical care, and treatment advances, say pain experts who are calling for a change. This spring, two major efforts are taking shape to fill a widely perceived need for standardized worldwide diagnostic criteria to classify all chronic pain conditions (Finnerup et al., 2013; IOM, 2011; Rief et al., 2012; Rief et al., 2010; von Hehn et al., 2012)....
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 17, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Pain In The Back? Exercise May Help You Learn Not To Feel It : Shots - Health News : NPR
More than 1 in 4 adult Americans say they've recently suffered a bout of low-back pain. It's one of the most common reasons people go to the doctor. And more and more people are being treated for it.
America spends more than $80 billion a year on back pain treatments. But many specialists say less treatment is usually more effective.
In fact, there's evidence that many standard treatments for back pain — surgery, spinal injections and painkillers — are often ineffective and can even worsen and prolong the problem.
Dr. Jerome Groopman agrees with that premise. He suffered back pain for almost 20 years. He...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 15, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
I ’m in pain, so why is my doctor suggesting a psychologist?
Pain makes us human. It is a bell, fine-tuned by evolution, that often rings in moments necessary for our survival. Because of pain, we can receive warnings that trigger the reflexes to escape potential danger.
But what happens when that bell continues to ring? How do we respond to a signal when it interferes with the other elements that make us human?
Pain that lasts longer than six months is considered chronic, and it may not go away. With chronic pain, the bell’s ongoing signal gets your nervous system wound up and increases its reactivity to incoming messages. This can be quite distressing and anxiety-provoking. Addi...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - August 14, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Salim Zerriny, MD Tags: Back Pain Mind body medicine Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Early scans for back pain add cost but offer little benefit for seniors
Older adults with new back pain usually end up getting a CT scan or MRI. That’s often a waste of time and money and has little or no effect on the outcome, according to a new study from the University of Washington.
The results contradict current guidelines from the American College of Radiology. The guidelines say that it’s “appropriate” for doctors to order early MRIs for people ages 70 and older with new-onset back pain, and many doctors do just that.
The study followed more than 5,200 men and women over the age of 65 who saw a primary care physician for a new bout of back pain. More than 1,500 o...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 20, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Howard LeWine, M.D. Tags: Back Pain Source Type: news
The “right” goal when managing pain
It makes sense that the primary goal of pain treatment should be to reduce pain. However, a recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine makes a strong case for looking beyond pain intensity when evaluating what is “successful” pain management.
The “balancing act” of managing chronic pain
Here is the problem: For people with chronic pain, the pain affects nearly all aspects of their lives. But at the same time, treatments to relieve chronic pain also have the potential to influence many aspects of a person’s life. Our best pain-relieving drugs have lots of unpleasant side effects. Even non-...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 18, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert T. Edwards, Ph.D. Tags: Health Addiction Arthritis Back Pain Cancer Migraines Pain Management Behavioral Health chronic pain managing pain Source Type: news
The psychology of low back pain
Follow me at @srinipillay
Low back pain is the second most common cause of disability in the U.S. Over 80% of people will experience an episode of this pain at some point in their lives. The most common reasons for low back pain are disc injuries, sciatica, lifting heavy objects, or some other non-specific back injury.
Yet even though back pain is incredibly common, not all people respond in the same way to this often-disabling condition. In fact, even if two people have the same level of pain, their responses to that pain can be very different. These differing responses are due in part to different people’s psycholo...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 25, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Srini Pillay, MD Tags: Back Pain Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Pain Management Source Type: news
Opiates no solution to back pain
Over the last year, the general public has been inundated with a steady stream of reports about the dangers of opiates — pain medicines like codeine, Percocet, and OxyContin. The harm in terms of ruined lives and death from illicit drugs such as heroin is not news. But what is new, and concerning, are the risks of prescription pain medicines — those doctors prescribe for pain due to a range of causes, including musculoskeletal problems like low back pain.
The history of using opiates for chronic pain
Back pain isn’t a new problem either, but the history of how doctors have treated it is probably new to many. A “cli...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Steven J. Atlas, MD, MPH Tags: Addiction Back Pain Behavioral Health Pain Management Source Type: news
JAMA Forum: The Pain and Opioid Epidemics: Policy and Vital Signs
This post authored by Diana Mason first ran in the The Journal of the American Medical Association Forum on August 9, 2016.
Diana Mason, PhD, RN
Near the end of my tenure as editor-in-chief of AJN, theAmerican Journal of Nursing in 2009, I asked one of the coordinators of our pain column to write an article on opioid dependence and addiction. The diversion and misuse of drugs such as oxycodone, with a resultant spike in overdose deaths, had been widely reported in the news media. Her surprising response continues to resonate for me as we face the urgent public health problem of opioid abuse.
The column’s coordinators,...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - August 10, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Pain and Opiods Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
I Learned How to Let Go of Pain — You Can, Too
“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” – Joseph Campbell
I am certainly not unique in my experience of pain. Like physical scars — of which I have plenty — pain of any kind tends to hang around doing its dirty work until the one suffering takes appropriate action to help dispel it. Granted, some physical pain can only be ameliorated, not eradicated. That’s good enough in some instances, although not ideal. Having gone through numerous instances where I’ve suffered intense physical pain, some of it chronic, as well as emotional pain complicated by other fact...
Source: World of Psychology - January 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Suzanne Kane Tags: Health-related Mindfulness Peer Support Personal Self-Help Chronic Pain Emotional Pain healing surgery Source Type: blogs
Managing pain after surgery
Surgery and pain pills used to go hand in hand. After all, you need a strong prescription pain medication to ensure you aren’t in pain after a procedure, right?
Turns out not only is prescription pain medication not always needed, but often not advisable after surgery, because it can raise the risk of opioid addiction. As a result, surgeons today are rethinking post-surgical pain management strategies. And if you’re going under the knife, you should too.
In the 1990s, the number of opioid prescriptions written for people undergoing surgery or experiencing pain conditions grew — and so did related problems. As a resul...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - February 7, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Kelly Bilodeau Tags: Health Pain Management Surgery Source Type: blogs
More opioids, more pain: Fueling the fire
For more than a century, clinicians have noticed a paradoxical phenomenon: certain patients who are taking opioids (which are supposed to numb pain) become more sensitive to pain than those who are not taking opioids.
The earliest observation of this phenomenon can be traced back to the British physician Sir Clifford Allbutt, who, in 1870, described it: “at such times I have certainly felt it a great responsibility to say that pain, which I know is an evil, is less injurious than morphia, which may be an evil. Does morphia tend to encourage the very pain it pretends to relieve?” Research studies and clinical observatio...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 8, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Shafik Boyaji, MD Tags: Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Pain and Relief Signals Muted in Fibromyalgia - MedPage Today
Patients with fibromyalgia showed less activation in brain responses to pain-related "punishment and reward" anticipatory signaling on functional MRI than healthy controls, a small study showed.Compared with patients with fibromyalgia, controls had significant increases in signaling in the right ventral tegmental area (VTA) while anticipating pain (P<0.01) and a trend for greater signal activation while actually experiencing pain (P=0.059), according to Marco L. Loggia, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues.Controls also had greater decreases in VTA signaling when anticipating relief from pain (P<0.05),...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 6, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Complementary therapies for neck pain
This study is making news because of its major finding: when the participants were assessed a year after the start of the study (that is, 6 to 7 months after completing treatment), those assigned to acupuncture or Alexander Technique lessons reported significantly less pain and disability than those receiving usual care alone. No serious side effects due to treatment were reported.
Of course, there are caveats
Before we declare victory over neck pain, we should mention some important limitations of this research. They include:
More than half of the patients with neck pain originally considered for the study were excluded....
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 3, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert Shmerling, M.D. Tags: Behavioral Health Complementary and alternative medicine Pain Management neck pain Source Type: news
Is there a “best” pain reliever for osteoarthritis?
Osteoarthritis (OA) affects tens of millions of Americans and is a leading cause of disability and reduced quality of life across the globe. Other than joint replacement surgery, there is no known “cure” for OA, and most treatments focus on relief of symptoms such as pain. Often, the first step is non-medication-based approaches such as physical therapy, exercise, and weight loss. Most patients, however, will eventually use pain relievers such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Other kinds of medication, such as opioids, have also been tested as treatments for OA, and there is ongoing debate about what ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 4, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert R. Edwards, Ph.D. Tags: Arthritis Drugs and Supplements Health Osteoarthritis Pain Management Source Type: news
