conclusions the research revealed that nonsmokers showed better mental health and dyadic adjustment than smokers, thus suggesting that smoking endangers and can impair the tranquility of families and that smoking also threatens the dyadic adjustment of couples. background the mental health and dyadic adjustment of smokers is a matter of serious concern which brings many demerits on mental healt...

BACKGROUND To manage intractable cancer pain, an alternative to systemic analgesics is neuraxial analgesia. In long-term treatment, intrathecal administration could provide a more satisfactory pain relief with lower doses of analgesics and fewer side-effects than that of epidural administration. However, implantable drug delivery systems using intrathecal pumps in Korea are very expensive. Cons...

the purpose of the present study is to develop appropriate scoring scales for each of the defined stages of the writing process, and also to determine to what extent these scoring scales can reliably and validly assess the performances of efl learners in an academic writing task. two hundred and two students’ writing samples were collected after a step-by-step process oriented essay writing ins...

OBJECTIVES To investigate patients' views about two common outcome measures used for back pain: Numerical Rating Scales for pain and the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire. SUBJECTS Thirty-six working adults who had previously sought primary care for back pain and who could speak and read English. METHOD Eight focus groups were conducted to explore participants' views about the 11-point...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the construct validity, reproducibility (ie, retest reliability) and internal responsiveness to treatment change of common single-item scales measuring overall pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to investigate the corresponding effect of common pain-related comorbidities and medical consultation on these outcomes. METHODS 236 patients with RA complete...

In Parkinson's disease (PD) rating scales are used to assess the degree of disease-related disability and to titrate long-term treatment to each phase of the disease. Recognition of nonmotor symptoms required modification of existing widely used scales to integrate nonmotor elements. In addition, new scales have been developed for the assessment of nonmotor symptoms. In this article, assessment...

UNLABELLED Valid and reliable assessment of pain is essential for both clinical trials and effective pain management. The nature of pain makes objective measurement impossible. Acute pain can be reliably assessed, both at rest (important for comfort) and during movement (important for function and risk of postoperative complications), with one-dimensional tools such as numeric rating scales or ...

BACKGROUND Patients in sub-Saharan Africa commonly experience pain, which often is un-assessed and undertreated. One hindrance to routine pain assessment in these settings is the lack of a single-item pain rating scale validated for the particular context. The goal of this study was to examine the face validity and cultural acceptability of two single-item pain scales, the Numerical Rating Scal...

This randomized controlled trial was performed to investigate whether placebo effects in chronic low back pain could be harnessed ethically by adding open-label placebo (OLP) treatment to treatment as usual (TAU) for 3 weeks. Pain severity was assessed on three 0- to 10-point Numeric Rating Scales, scoring maximum pain, minimum pain, and usual pain, and a composite, primary outcome, total pain ...