University of Adelaide researchers have made advances in the understanding of one of the world's most common medical conditions, gastric reflux, and how patients experience pain from it.
Anne Mosley developed intense pelvic pain while she was pregnant with her youngest child 17 years ago. The pain was caused by a grape-sized pocket of fluid on her urethra, which became infected.
Pediatric researchers have found race- and ethnicity-based disparities in pain management and length of stay among children who came to hospital emergency departments for treatment of abdominal pain.
New research from Johns Hopkins suggests that it may not be the steroids in spinal shots that provide relief from lower back pain, but the mere introduction of any of a number of fluids, such as anesthetics and saline, to the space around the spinal cord.
American Academy of Pain Medicine physician leaders hail long-awaited labeling changes by FDA as a way to enhance patient safety in answer to a 2012 Citizen's Petition.
Prescribing of strong opioid medications for non-cancer pain in the United States has nearly doubled over the past decade, reports a study in the October issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
A new study led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that during a decade when prescription opioid use has skyrocketed, the identification and treatment of pain has failed to improve, and the use of non-opioid analgesics has plateaued, or even declined. The study was published online September 13 in the journal Medical Care.
Using large and frequent doses of the pain-killer codeine may actually produce heightened sensitivity to pain, without the same level of relief offered by morphine, according to new research from the University of Adelaide.
Multi-faceted pain research discoveries within the last decade are bringing new hope for the estimated 100 million Americans with chronic pain. Unfortunately, translation of these scientific advances into clinical practice could be stalled without sufficient funding for both basic science and clinical pain research, according to the American Pain Society.
People who get occasional migraines are more likely to be obese than people who do not have migraines, according to a study published in the September 11, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A new published study in Journal of Cellular Physiology by a team led by Dr. Antonio Giordano and Dr. Gianfranco Bellipanni of Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine and Temple University (Philadelphia, USA) adds a new prospective on the research on pain perception.
A recent Institute of Medicine report indicates that 116-million Americans live with some form of chronic pain. Historically, chemists have developed drugs aimed at just one biological target. Two drugs used together may metabolize differently or present other issues. This new drug, named UMB 425 by the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy research team, affects two different opioid receptors, providing diminished tolerance.
Migraine may have long-lasting effects on the brain’s structure, according to a study published in the August 28, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Studies show that migraine is more common among people with lower incomes. This relationship is examined in a study published in the August 28, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, looking at whether developing migraines limits people’s educational and career achievements, leading to a lower income status, or whether problems related to low income such as stressful life events and poor access to health care increase the likelihood of developing migraines.
Although a pooling of data from 12 studies showed a statistically significant association between use of lateral wedge insoles and lower pain in medial knee osteoarthritis, among trials comparing wedge insoles with neutral insoles, there was no significant or clinically important association between use of wedge insoles and reduction in knee pain, according to a study in the August 21 issue of JAMA.
When post surgical pain becomes chronic pain, the causes could be related to the type of surgery performed or from common psychological factors considered to be predictive of chronic post-op pain, such as anxiety, depression and pain catastrophizing. Research reported in The Journal of Pain showed that a combination of acute pain and anxiety and pain magnification, regardless of the type of surgical procedure, increases the risk for development of chronic pain.
Pain is the most common reason a patient sees a physician but few physicians have received adequate training to help their patients, according to a Henry Ford Hospital article published in the Journal of American Osteopathic Association. An estimated 100 million people in the United States are living with chronic pain, which accounts for up to $635 billion annually in health care costs and lost productivity. A 2011 study found that for every medical specialist, there are more than 28,500 patients with chronic pain.
Pain is the most common and costly health problem in the United States, but allocations of public and private research dollars for pain studies lag far behind funding levels for several other diseases, which impact significantly fewer people and have far less economic impact. According to the American Pain Society (APS), just one percent of research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is dedicated to pain research, even though some 100 million Americans have chronic pain, as the Institute of Medicine has reported
Funding for pain research remains at disproportionately low levels despite overwhelming evidence that untreated and undertreated chronic pain is the costing the nation more than $600 billion a year in medical costs and lost work time, and is expected to soar even higher as the population continues to age. Roger B. Fillingim, PhD, is president of the American Pain Society and an outspoken advocate for increased public and private funding support for basic science and clinical pain research.
A new AACN Practice Alert, “Assessing Pain in the Critically Ill Adult,” provides evidence-based recommendations and supporting documentation on assessing pain in critically ill patients.