Abstract Background Pain is described as the fifth vital sign, and inadequate pain management is linked to numerous immediate and long-term negative outcomes. Venipuncture is one of the most painful medical procedures in children. Distraction is one of the main effective ways to relieve pain. Reducing patients’ pain sensation maybe feeling is important for all nurses for many reasons. Unneces...

Pain measurement largely depends on the ability to rate personal subjective pain. Nevertheless, pain scales can be difficult to use during medical procedures. We hypothesized that pain can be expressed intuitively and in real-time by squeezing a pressure sensitive device. We developed such a device called "Painmouse(®)" and tested it on healthy volunteers and patients in two separate studies: S...

BACKGROUND Pruritus is still a forgotten aspect of hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) and, to date, has never been adequately studied. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence, and explore the characteristics, of pruritus in a well-defined cohort of HS patients. SETTING An academic hospital-based cross-sectional study in The Netherlands. METHODS A numerical rating scale ...

BACKGROUND Chronicity amongst musculoskeletal patients remains a considerable burden and predicting outcomes in these patients has proven difficult. Although a large number of studies have investigated a range of predictors of outcome few have looked at the practitioners' ability to discern those that improve from those most likely to fail to improve. This study aimed to investigate the ability...

Until very recently there has been an anomaly in the assessment of the intensity of pediatric pain. The most commonly used self-report scale is the one that, up to now, has had the smallest amount of supportive research. This scale, the numerical rating scale (NRS), is administered by asking patients to say a number, usually from 0 to 10, to express the intensity of their pain. Compared with we...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE A successful outcome after lumbar discectomy indicates a substantial improvement. To use the cutoffs for minimal clinically important difference (MCID) as success criteria has a large potential bias, simply because it is difficult to classify patients who report that they are "moderately improved". We propose that the criteria for success should be defined by those who re...

Patients frequently experience postoperative pain after a total knee arthroplasty; such pain is always challenging to treat and may delay the patient's recovery. It is unclear whether local infiltration or a femoral nerve block offers a better analgesic effect after total knee arthroplasty.We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to compare local infilt...

BACKGROUND Sacroiliac joint pain is a common cause of chronic low back pain. Different techniques for radiofrequency denervation of the sacroiliac joint have been used to treat this condition. However, results have been inconsistent because the variable sensory supply to the sacroiliac joint is difficult to disrupt completely using conventional radiofrequency. Cooled radiofrequency is a novel t...

This article of the month presents results of a clinical study conducted in the UK and Romania, which evaluated the efficacy of a THC:CBD cannabis extract (Sativex®) and a THC cannabis extract in the treatment of 177 patients with cancer pain, who experienced inadequate pain reduction despite intake of opioids [Johnson et al. J Pain Symptom Manage, 2010, in press]. Sativex resulted in a signifi...

Study was conducted to assess the sensitivity and simplicity of various pain rating scales in patients of osteoarthritis with chronic pain so that most appropriate scale can be identified. Scales included were Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale (WBS), Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), Faces Pain Scale- Revised (FPS-R), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Verbal Rating Scale (VRS). Patients were asked t...