OBJECTIVE We evaluated the analgesic efficacy and safety of tramadol 37.5 mg/acetaminophen 325 mg combination tablet, for the treatment of breakthrough pain in cancer patients. METHODS This study was conducted at Changhua Christian Hospital, Changhua, Taiwan from January 2006 to February 2007. The single-center and open-label study enrolled 59 opioid-treated cancer patients with at least mode...

OBJECTIVE To compare the clinical and radiological outcome of both sides using the unilateral approach. METHODS Unilateral laminotomy was performed to achieve bilateral decompression. Thirty-nine patients who underwent this procedure were analyzed prospectively using the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), the visual analog scale (VAS) pain score to evaluate symptoms in both legs, and the radiol...

INTRODUCTION: Patient satisfaction becomes more important in our modern health care system. The assessment of satisfaction is difficult because it is a multifactorial item for which no golden standard exists. One of the potential methods of measuring satisfaction is by using the well-known visual analogue scale (VAS). In this study, we validated VAS for satisfaction. PATIENT AND METHODS: In th...

The population of Japan is aging rapidly, and maintaining the quality of life of elderly people has become an important issue in contemporary Japan. This study was conducted to verify the validity of the self-administered visual analogue scale (VAS) for assessing the health status of elderly people. A survey was conducted in two villages in western Japan in 2003. A total of 2040 participants, a...

BACKGROUND There is a belief that the amount of pain perceived is merely directly proportional to the extent of injury. The intensity of postoperative pain is however influenced by multiple factors aside from the extent of trauma. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the relationship between preoperative factors that have been shown to predict postoperative pain and the self-reports of pain...

UNLABELLED The visual analog scale (VAS) is a tool widely used to measure pain, yet controversy surrounds whether the VAS score is ratio or ordinal data. We studied 52 postoperative patients and measured their pain intensity using the VAS. We then asked them to consider different amounts of pain (conceptually twice as much and then half as much) and asked them to repeat their VAS rating after e...

We compared the analgesic efficacy of spinal and general anaesthesia following transurethral procedures. 97 and 47 patients underwent transurethral bladder tumour resection (TUR-B) and transurethral prostatectomy (TUR-P), respectively. Postoperative pain was recorded using an 11-point visual analogue scale (VAS). VAS score was greatest at discharge from recovery room for general anaesthesia (P ...

OBJECTIVE To reveal the relationship between depression and WMSD. METHOD Five physiatrists participated in the workplace musculoskeletal survey and diagnosed 724 office workers with WMSD by performing detailed history taking and physical examination. All subjects were asked to answer the Korean version of the Beck depressive inventory (K-BDI), and to express their pain according to the visual...

BACKGROUND The EQ-5D health-related quality of life instrument comprises a health state classification followed by a health evaluation using a visual analogue scale (VAS). The EQ-5D has been employed frequently in economic evaluations, yet the relationship between the two parts of the instrument remains ill-understood. In this paper, we examine the correspondence between VAS scores and health s...

PURPOSE To evaluate the correlation of kyphosis and wedge angles with pain relief and functional outcome after percutaneous vertebroplasty (PV). METHODS 15 men and 19 women aged 41 to 85 (mean, 62) years who presented with osteoporotic wedge compression fractures of the dorsolumbar spine below T5 and had failed conservative treatment were included. Patients were assessed before and one year a...