Latest Conference Articles

News and updates about Hospital Medicine 2013.

News and updates about the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers.

News and updates about the 2013 American Pain Society Annual Meeting.

Understanding and addressing these disorders can improve the patient's mental health as well as their chronic pain and other comorbid conditions. Incorporating cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy into the management of chronic pain has been shown to improve pain outcomes.

Successful CRPS management should be viewed as a continuum that requires a flexible treatment approach that incorporates pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic components.

Pain is a common side effect of cancer that can be caused by the disease itself, treatment, and other factors. Greater awareness of the causes and types of cancer pain, knowledge of available treatments, and willingness to consult pain specialists are the keys to providing effective cancer pain management.

Pain has been associated with a number of conditions, including addiction, depression, and anxiety. Greater awareness of concurrent comorbid conditions and the options available to treat them produces better outcomes in chronic pain patients.

Pain is a product of the brain and the experiences of pain can be shaped by mood, cognition, anxiety, fear, genetics, and other individual differences. Currently, pain is measured subjectively but an objective measure of pain may improve the diagnosis and management of patients with chronic pain.

New implantable technologies such as spinal cord stimulation and peripheral nerve stimulation have shown great potential to improve the management of patients with chronic pain.

Chronic pain is a difficult condition to diagnose and manage, especially since most diagnostic measures are subjective and treatment varies from patient to patient. A key to diagnosing and treating chronic pain is to have a strong understanding of the different diagnostic tools and treatment options available.

A poster session at the 2013 AAPM annual meeting highlighted research on the role of central sensitization in chronic pain, the use of microwave ablation to treat refractory pain in patients with soft tissue tumors, a possible treatment for opioid-induced hyperalgesia, and the psychosocial effects of opioid treatment in patients with sickle-cell anemia.

Trial design and other factors can conspire to produce false positive or false negative results, which complicates not only the search for more effective pain treatments but also the safe and effective use of pain medications in practice.

The authors of three award-winning posters shared results and insights at the 2013 AAPM Annual Meeting.

While digital medicine and neuromodulation have gathered enough clinical evidence to treat chronic pain, Timothy R. Deer, MD, president and CEO of St. Francis Hospital's Center for Pain Relief, in Charleston, WV, said regenerative therapies like platelet-rich plasma, stem cells and biologics are lagging years behind in the testing realm with a long road to go.

There are several tools and resources available to pain practitioners who want to use their patient data to conduct a clinical trial.

The advent of accountable care organizations, bundled payments, and other reforms under the Affordable Care Act has steered the focus of health care delivery from quantity to quality, but where exactly do pain medicine providers fit into the new value-based care model, and how can it benefit their patients?

News and updates about AAPM 2013, the 29th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

Ability to differentiate between subtypes of frontotemporal lobar degeneration could accelerate research into the pathology and prevention of this disease and aid in the design of disease-modifying therapies.

Study results suggest that oxidative stress may play a direct role in the neurodegeneration that occurs in ALS.

DaTscanâ„¢ SPECT imaging can help physicians assess diagnostic category and improve diagnostic confidence for patients with dementia with Lewy bodies.

Severe neuropathic pain due to diabetic peripheral neuropathy is associated with negative health impact and increased healthcare utilization, underscoring the need for the development of safe and effective treatments.

Study results show a novel formulation of oxcarbazepine may provide long-term seizure reduction in patients with refractory epilepsy, while a separate trial produced promising results for long-term lacosamide treatment in elderly patients with partial-onset seizures.

Data presented at the 2013 AAN Annual Meeting indicate that MAP0004, which delivers dihydroergotamine (DHE) via oral inhalation, is effective in the acute treatment of severe migraine pain.

Patients with Parkinson's disease and neurogenic orthostatic hypotension treated with droxidopa showed improvements in symptoms of dizziness and lightheadedness, and in systolic blood pressure.

Researchers report the monoclonal antibody solanezumab may improve cognition and activities of daily living for patients with mild Alzheimer's disease.

Study shows levetiracetam, carbamazepine, and topiramate are equally safe and effective in the treatment of adult patients with epilepsy induced by MELAS. However, valproate was found to be less effective and associated with more adverse events.

Compared with placebo, teriflunomide was shown to significantly reduce the occurrence of relapses with sequelae and relapses treated with corticosteroids in a post-hoc analysis of pivotal clinical trial data.

While phenotypes of multiple sclerosis (MS) are well-established, there remains heterogeneity among patients that fit existing clinical definitions.

Oral dimethyl fumarate (BG-12) is in development for the treatment of relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS), though experimental evidence already suggests it may provide anti-inflammatory and cytoprotective effects by activating the transcription factor Nrf2.

Researchers successfully treated a patient with refractory complex regional pain syndrome by inducing a coma with ketamine and dexmedetomidine.