OBJECTIVES Neurofibromatosis (NF) is a genetic disease with multiple clinical manifestations that can significantly impact quality of life (QOL). Clinical trials should include patient-reported outcomes (PROs) as endpoints to assess treatment effects on various aspects of QOL, but there is no consensus on the selection and use of such measures in NF. This article describes the PRO Working Group...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether data obtained from patients returning postal questionnaires accurately reflect how patients receiving imaging-guided lumbar facet injections respond. METHODS Seventy-eight patients receiving lumbar facet joint injections who returned an outcomes questionnaire (responders) were age and gender matched with 78 patients who did not return the postal questionnaire (...

BACKGROUND Assessing pain intensity in older adults is critical and challenging. There is debate about the most effective way to ask older adults to describe their pain severity, and clinicians vary in their preferred approaches, making comparison of pain intensity scores across settings difficult. METHODS A total of 3,676 residents from 71 community nursing homes across eight states were ask...

Background: It is important to use reliable, valid, and responsive instruments to assess the treatment outcomes. The functional rating index (FRI) is a patient reported outcome measure to assess the pain and function in patients with neck and low back pain. The FRI has been translated and culturally adapted into Persian language. The purpose of this study was to investigate the responsiveness o...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the management of postoperative pain at the Niamey National Hospital. METHODS A prospective study was conducted in the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care at the Niamey National Hospital from March to June, 2009. Data collected included age, sex, literacy, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status classification, ty...

OBJECTIVE Correlating two unidimensional scales for measurement of self-reported pain intensity for elderly and identifying a preference for one of the scales. METHOD A study conducted with 101 elderly people living in Nursing Home who reported any pain and reached ( 13 the scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination. A Numeric Rating Scale - (NRS) of 11 points and a Verbal Descriptor Scale (...

Tonsillectomy is one of the most common surgical procedures for otolaryngologists. Although tonsillectomy procedures are common, like any surgical procedure, there are post-operative complaints and complications. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the pattern of post-operative pain in tonsillectomy using the harmonic scalpel (HS). 43 patients were entered into this study (13 me...

To investigate the effects of intraoperative dexmedetomidine on pain in highly nicotine-dependent patients after thoracic surgery.Highly nicotine-dependent men underwent thoracic surgery and received postoperative patient-controlled intravenous analgesia with sufentanil. In dexmedetomidine group (experimental group, n = 46), dexmedetomidine was given at a loading dose of 1 μg/kg for 10 minutes,...

PURPOSE Cancer pain is a multidimensional experience that includes physiological, sensory, affective, cognitive, behavioral, and sociocultural dimensions. Few prospective studies have examined the relationship between a patient's expectation of pain improvement and the pain prognosis. The aim of this prospective study was to investigate whether patients' expectation to pain reduction was associ...

Objective: To determine the efficacy of post-operative pain control over the first 24 hours in patients undergoing unilateral total knee arthroplasty (TKA) using a multi-modal analgesia protocol including femoral nerve catheters (FNC). Materials and Methods: 119 patients who underwent unilateral TKA between 2009 and 2010 under regional anesthesia with FNC were studied. Electronic charts were re...