Migraine

The development of clinical medical-practice guidelines is a difficult and arduous process. Experts in various disciplines volunteer many hours of their time for medical research reviews and analyses and meetings with fellow guidelines-panel members, and painstakingly writing and reviewing the final report. However, there are many concerns about the quality of medical research serving as a basis for those guidelines.

HITECH says covered entities must be able to monitor and record every time that patient data is accessed, enabling the entity to comply with the new notification requirements should unauthorized access occur. Will the new rules end up restricting the efficient exchange of data that is crucial to providing high-quality healthcare?

Some pundits have written that health insurance mandates are well beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government to tax, spend, and regulate interstate commerce. Others have picked up on these arguments and applied them to the EHR-implementation incentives under the HITECH Act as well. The bottom line is that these arguments fail, for four reasons.

There has been much discussion about the HITECH Act and the effects it will have on healthcare in this country. The health IT industry and the federal government claim that EHR use will lead to a decrease in costs and an overall improvement in patient care. Skeptics like me disagree with these claims and feel that the push to adopt complex EHRs will be a bad deal for physicians.

Lately, I've been thinking about how fast everything moves these days. This is true in technology, medicine, business, and other important areas of our lives. Keeping up with changes in healthcare is a real challenge; just reading monthly print medical journals won't cut it anymore in the digital age. Now, practically every day I find myself looking something up on Wikipedia.

Pain assessment appears to reduce sedative drug dosing, allowing for objective pain evaluation and analgesic drug dosing based on a patient's report.

Compared with study participants who reported no pain, those experiencing chronic pain in two or more joints had a 50 percent greater risk of falling.

Depression is a common problem among elderly patients in primary care clinics and inpatient settings.

Collaboration is important in healthcare, as evidenced by the growing number of "learning communities" and grassroots efforts that are bringing people and organizations together to work on the issue of eliminating disparities in health and healthcare.

Breast-cancer patients who experience chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy during their treatment with Taxol are three times more likely to eventually be diagnosed with chronic neuropathic pain.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recently updated its guidelines on fluid intake for runners during a race, citing new research on hyponatremia from the University of South Africa in Capetown.

In his July 2009 editorial, Dr. Robert C. Like, MD, MS, wrote about the importance of creating "communities of practice" and the increasing role of the Web and collaboration in facilitating the development of learning networks. Here, he continues this discussion by sharing some perspectives from the field of library science about the impact of the Internet on clinical practice and public health.

The challenge of eliminating disparities in clinical trials is being addressed by the Eliminating Disparities in Clinical Trials (EDICT) project, which recognizes that broadening diversity in clinical trials will result in improved effectiveness and safety of future medicines, improved trial quality, and reduced discrepancies in health equity.

In laboratory studies, morphine can directly boost tumor-cell proliferation and inhibit the immune response. Researchers also found that opiates promote angiogenesis.

Dutch researchers confirm that five strength exercises--the one-arm row, shoulder abduction, shoulder elevation, reverse fly and upright row--can substantially reduce perceived pain.

At a recent meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology's SKIN Academy, new recommendations for minimum sun protection, as well as how dermatologists can help dispel myths about sun exposure, sunscreen, and vitamin D were reviewed.

Adults partaking in animal-assisted therapy while recovering from total-joint replacement surgery require 50 percent less pain medication than those who do not.

Findings a cause for concern as depressed patients are excluded from virtually all controlled trials of opioids as a high risk group for addiction.

At PAINWeek 09, Howard Heit, MD, FACP, FASAM, began his presentation "The Patient-centered Approach to Urine Drug Testing in the Chronic Pain Patient" by briefly discussing the concept of Universal Precautions in pain medicine, noting that the term originated from the infectious disease model.

New research from a plastic surgeon reveals that migraine sufferers may have another treatment option—surgery.

A $1.8 million grant will help the University of Michigan investigate the use of herpes simplex virus-based vectors to deliver genes to sensory nerves from application in the skin, which researchers believe hold promise not only for the treatment of pain but also ultimately for the treatment of peripheral neuropathy itself.

The new health Internet being designed by federal officials will hopefully be up and running by next year, a move that will allow physicians and patients to more easily exchange health information.

Pain scores were significantly reduced in the blinded phase of a Henry Ford Health System study, with many patients experiencing complete resolution of pain on the drug.

High costs, unreliable vendors, lengthy installation and transition processes, disruptions to workflow, reduced productivity--it's no wonder that so few practices have adopted full-featured EHRs.

The Joint Commission, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and other organizations have identified medication errors and the points of transition during patients’ care that increase their likelihood as promising targets in the push to improve quality outcomes. Communication, coordination of care, and the effective application of health IT hold the key to reducing errors and improving patient safety.

Given that healthcare reform is such a contentious subject in the United States, it is not surprising that conflicts have arisen between physicians and patients who hold different views and who aren’t shy about discussing those opinions in the examination room.