Declaring that the benefits of the original formulation of OxyContin no longer outweigh the risks of misuse and abuse, the FDA announced it would not approve any applications for non-tamper resistant formulations of the drug, a decision that could have far-reaching implications for all makers of opioid medications.
Understanding and addressing these disorders can improve the patient's mental health as well as their chronic pain and other comorbid conditions. Incorporating cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy into the management of chronic pain has been shown to improve pain outcomes.
Researchers successfully treated a patient with refractory complex regional pain syndrome by inducing a coma with ketamine and dexmedetomidine.
Though original results of the five-year Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) determined surgically-treated spinal stenosis (SpS) patients showed significant advantage in body pain and physical function after two years than their nonsurgically-treated counterparts, a subgroup analysis published in the Feb. 15 issue of Spine found patients who received epidural steroid injections (ESI) in the SPORT study exhibited a worse outcome through four years' follow-up, regardless of surgical or nonsurgical treatment.
The push to provide better pain care and ensure adequate analgesia for patients living with chronic pain led to liberalized opioid prescription practices that have been accompanied by a massive increase in the abuse, misuse, and diversion of prescription opioids. Efforts to combat this include technological remedies such as "abuse-deterrent" formulations of opioids and educational approaches such as the REMS program approved by the FDA in 2012.
Swedish researchers carried out in-depth interviews with 10 people who had experienced chronic pain for between four and 32 years.
Reducing the number of visits a chronic pain patient makes to the emergency department may be accomplished by simply providing 15- to 30-minute consultations.
For as long as I've been a nurse I have been frustrated with the attitude of many of my peers regarding patients with chronic pain. I have never understood why so many nurses feel it so crucial to pass judgment on patients who are in obvious pain.
In examining the brains of people with a chronic pain condition known as complex region pain syndrome (CRPS), scientists found that patients’ brains "looked like an inept cable guy had changed the hookups, rewiring the areas related to emotion, pain perception and the temperature of their skin."
