STUDY DESIGN  Retrospective review. INTRODUCTION  Lumbar radiculopathy and claudicant leg pain are common degenerative spinal conditions often treated by elective microdiscectomy or decompression. Published outcome data for these procedures have focused on improvement in pain scores, and not on grounded functional outcome or depression scores.1,2,3 Moreover, depression is considered by many s...

Gender-based differences in pain epidemiology, pain threshold, attitudes toward pain management, coping styles and social roles are well described, yet little is known about the chronic pain experience in women or the role race plays. A retrospective analysis of self-reported data using a secondary clinical database was performed to elucidate the relationship between race and pain severity, dep...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the age-specific disability weight of chronic schistosomiasis japonica in China. METHODS Between October 2004 and January 2005, residents from two schistosome-endemic counties were screened for Schistosoma japonicum infection using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Disability and morbidity were assessed in seropositive individuals using the European quality of life q...

Introduction The SPADI, developed by Roach et al in 1991, is a self-administered questionnaire designed to measure pain and disability associated with shoulder pathology in the outpatient setting. It consists of 13 items5 pain and 8 disability, all scored 0 to 100. All items are equally weighted then added for a percentage score 0 (best) to 100 (worst). Completion time is documented generally t...

OBJECTIVE To compare estimates of the occurrence of shoulder pain according to (a) different approaches to defining 'shoulder' and (b) restricting the definition to only include those with associated disability. METHODS A postal questionnaire survey was sent to a sample of 500 patients registered with a general practice in south Manchester. After additional mailings to non-responders, 312 que...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the association between self-reported low back pain (LBP) and lower limb disability as well as the association between neck pain and upper limb disability. METHODS A hundred twenty-six participants registered as a healthcare staff member were included in this cross-sectional study. The presence of neck and LBP were determined using the Nordic Musculoskeletal Question...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to compare the effects of trigger point (TRP) mesotherapy and acupuncture (ACP) mesotherapy in the treatment of patients with chronic low back pain. DESIGN Short term randomized controlled trial. SETTING 62 subjects with chronic low back pain were recruited at outpatients Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinic at the University of Rome "La Sapienza"...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the correlation of fatigue with pain in rheumatoid arthritis patients and with disability in osteoarthritis patients. METHODS Twenty patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 20 patients with osteoarthritis were evaluated. The degree of fatigue was evaluated with a visual analogue scale and the Multidimensional Assessment of Fatigue. Pain was evaluated with a visual anal...