Stroke patients can experience a variety of pain. Many stroke patients have co-morbidities such as osteoporosis, arthritis or diabetes causing diabetic neuropathy. As well as pain from other long term conditions, stroke patients can experience central post-stroke pain, headaches, and musculoskeletal issues such as hypertonia, contractures, spasticity, and subluxations. These stroke patients can...

BACKGROUND Epidural injection of corticosteroids is one of the most commonly used interventions in managing chronic spinal pain. However, there has been a lack of well-designed randomized, controlled studies to determine the effectiveness of epidural injections. Consequently, debate continues as to the value of epidural steroid injections in managing spinal pain. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the eff...

BACKGROUND While most recommended pain management practices have been developed for hospitalised patients, little is known about their relevance for ambulatory patients presenting with acute pain. OBJECTIVE In this study, we explored the relationship between patients' reported use of recommended pain management practices and pain relief in outpatients. METHOD 703 adult patients who presente...

We studied 30 consecutive outpatients (14 men and 16 women; mean (SD) age 46 (11-8) years) with gallstone disease, confirmed by ultrasonography or radiography or at operation, who complained of biliary colic. Patients were randomly treated under double blind conditions with either 75 mg diclofenac sodium given intramuscularly or placebo and were followed up for 24 hours. All patients had given ...

BACKGROUND Pulsed radiofrequency (PRF) treatment is defined as the delivery of short pulses of radiofrequency via a needle tip, which does not result in an actual thermal lesions. There are mixed views regarding the use of PRF for trigeminal neuralgia (TN). In our opinion, one of the main reasons for the contrasting views is the insufficient PRF dose employed in previous studies. In a recent st...

BACKGROUND Management pain in hospitalized children is challenging for the health-care professionals. Nurses have the most interactions with children who need to assess and manage for their pain. Therefore, the aim was to describe nurses' experiences from pain management among hospitalized children from Iranian culture in this study. METHODS A phenomenological study was conducted in which 23 ...

BACKGROUND There is increasing debate about cannabis use for medical purposes, including for symptomatic treatment of chronic pain. We investigated patterns and correlates of cannabis use in a large community sample of people who had been prescribed opioids for chronic non-cancer pain. METHODS The POINT study included 1514 people in Australia who had been prescribed pharmaceutical opioids for...

BACKGROUND Expected pain relief from treatment is associated with positive clinical outcomes in patients with musculoskeletal pain. Less studied is the influence on outcomes related to the preference of patients and providers for a specific treatment. OBJECTIVES We sought to determine how provider and patient preferences for a manual therapy intervention influenced outcomes in individuals wit...

Although acupuncture is gaining popularity for the treatment of nonspecific pain, the immediate analgesic effect of acupuncture has never been reviewed. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on disease-related pain to critically evaluate the immediate effect of acupuncture for pain relief. The PubMed and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Cervical radiculopathy is a common entity that can become unremitting, seriously disrupting the patient's work and social activities. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the feasibility, tolerance, and efficacy of transforaminal periganglionic steroid infiltration under CT control. METHODS Thirty patients with cervical radiculopathy, despite at least 1 month of app...