Chronic Pain

Coping strategies based on enhanced mindfulness and a greater sense of agency can help patients improve their quality of life.

A radiograph to detect the presence of a cervical rib should be mandatory prior to thoracic outlet syndrome surgery as a baseline study.

Medication selection should be driven by rational polypharmacy and take into account such factors as pain type, underlying symptoms, comorbidities, patient preference, and medication side effects.

Some studies have shown benefit in reducing pain and spasticity in patients with multiple sclerosis, but the data is mixed and can be highly subjective.

Although it is believed to help counteract joint and cartilage deterioration in osteoarthritis (OA), glucosamine supplementation is no more effective than placebo in preventing knee degeneration in patients with chronic knee pain.

Study results show that pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee often exhibits neuropathic pain characteristics.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to primary care physicians treating chronic pain is their perception of inadequacy in managing this patient population.

Simple advice is equally as effective as more intense and comprehensive physiotherapy exercise programs for chronic whiplash-associated disorders.

The opioid overdose epidemic and resulting focus on preventing opioid abuse and diversion could threaten access to effective medications for patients with legitimate medical needs.

Despite rampant opioid misuse, abuse, and diversion self-reported by chronic pain patients in a study presented at the American Pain Society 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting, primary care providers tended to downgrade the patients' risk for engaging in those drug-related aberrant behaviors, indicating a gap between physicians' objective risk assessment for opioid abuse and the actual extent of the problem.

Patients who are hospitalized for pain related to acute pancreatitis pose unique challenges for achieving adequate analgesia, which is particularly true for those admitted with preexisting chronic pain and prior opioid use.

Though constipation as a side effect of opioid therapy is generally considered a tolerability issue that can be treated with over-the-counter laxatives, opioid-induced constipation may still lead to serious gastrointestinal complications.

Teasing out relevant the relationship among risk factors, comorbidities, and migraine is challenging but critical for optimal migraine treatment.

For many migraine sufferers, current strategies to treat headaches, or to prevent their occurrence, are insufficient to ward off the near-daily occurrence of head pain, prompting researchers to investigate methods of pre-emptive migraine treatment.

The clinical challenge of accurate headache diagnosis in the office can be overcome by taking a broad view of the various diagnostic categories of headache.

Although the concept of delivering chronic pain care through multidisciplinary clinics is less than half a century old, John Loeser, MD, believes the model has already surpassed its peak in the United States, mainly due to financial reasons.

With the co-occurrence of chronic pain and cancer amassing from improved cancer survival rates, it is increasingly important for healthcare professionals to understand how the conditions interrelate and influence patients' quality of life.

Expanding upon previous investigations of the associations among low vitamin D levels, chronic pain, and poor sleep within the general and non-pain populations, a research poster presented at the American Pain Society 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting suggests correcting inadequate vitamin D levels in middle-aged to older patients with knee osteoarthritis may reduce their clinical pain and improve sleep quality.

Although the benefit of Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA) for preventing headaches in adults with chronic migraine has been extensively established in clinical trials, limited data exists on the injections' effectiveness for the indication beyond 5 treatment cycles.

Literature review by the AAN shows that oral and oral spray forms of medical marijuana effectively treat some symptoms of MS, but there is little evidence to support efficacy in treating other neurologic diseases such as Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and Tourette syndrome.