Author Interviews, Pain Research, Surgical Research / 05.01.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Migraine” by makelessnoise is licensed under CC BY 2.0Lisa Gfrerer, MD PhD Clinical Fellow in Surgery Brigham and Women's Hospital William Gerald Austen MD Chief, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Chief, Division of Burn Surgery Massachusetts General Hospital  MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Response: Migraine surgery patients at our institution are chronic pain patients who have failed conservative therapy and are severely disabled by their disease. We initiated this study to understand two important points. First, it was previously unclear how to categorize these patients in terms of pain intensity and disability on the spectrum of better known pain conditions such as chronic back pain/ nerve pain/ carpal tunnel.  This is very important to appreciate the extent of this disease. Second, instead of collecting migraine characteristic such as decrease in migraine days/ duration/ pain, we wanted to understand how functionally disabled these patients are in their daily lives and how much better they get after surgery. This is ultimately what matters to patients. We therefore decided to evaluate our outcomes by using the Pain Self Efficacy Questionnaires (PSEQ). This validated pain questionnaire has been used to describe pain intensity/disability in patients with different acute and chronic pain conditions. (more…)
Author Interviews, Gastrointestinal Disease, Pain Research / 28.11.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Charles Melbern (Mel) Wilcox, MD, MSPH Director of the division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology University of Alabama-Birmingham  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this survey? What are the main findings? Response: Nearly every person experiences pain at some point in their life – for many, the pain is acute and occasional, but for others, the pain is chronic and can be debilitating. Research shows that more than 25.3 million Americans suffer from daily pain and, every year, consumers purchase more than $20 billion per year on over-the-counter (OTC) pain medicines. In my work with the American Gastroenterological Association, we set out to explore the behaviors, beliefs, and misunderstandings that Americans have when it comes to OTC pain medicines. We surveyed 1,015 U.S. adults and 251 gastroenterologists to gain insight on how they were approaching pain management and OTC pain medicine use. The survey found that Americans are routinely ignoring OTC pain medicine labels and are not consulting their health-care professionals about their pain before taking OTC pain medicines. As a direct result, gastroenterologists are noticing their patients experiencing complications and unintentional overdose symptoms. They see an average of 90 overdose cases each year, about two a week, due to OTC pain medicine overdose. Ninety percent of gastroenterologists believe their patients require more and better education on how to use OTC pain medicine safely. They find that patients are not fully understanding the harms associated with taking too much. When asked why patients take more than the recommended dose, Americans say that they are confident in their ability to manage their medication (32 percent) or they wanted to feel better faster, mistakenly thinking more medicine would be the solution (73 percent). (more…)
Author Interviews, CT Scanning, Emergency Care, Pain Research / 14.11.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeff Perry, MD, MSc, CCFP-EM Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine Senior Scientist, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute Research Chair in Emergency Neurological Research, University of Ottawa Emergency Physician and Epidemiology Program The Ottawa Hospital Ottawa, Ontario MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Headache accounts for about 1-2% of all emergency department visits.  One of the most feared diagnosis within these patients is subarachnoid hemorrhage. While investigations are clearly warranted for patients with a diminished level of consciousness or new focal neurological deficits, approximately 50% of patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) have no focal or global neurological findings. Deciding whether to image headache patients with no deficits is difficult, especially since timely diagnosis and treatment results in substantially better outcomes. The desire to never miss a subarachnoid hemorrhage, however, contributes to escalating neuroimaging rates and a dogmatic adherence to lumbar puncture, even if the scan is negative, despite the very high sensitivity of computed tomography. However, a recent population-based study suggested that over 5% of confirmed subarachnoid hemorrhages were missed at initial presentation, especially in smaller hospitals. Therefore, identifying which headache patients require investigations to rule-out SAH is of great importance. We have previously derived (N=1,999) and refined (N=2,131) the Ottawa SAH Rule. In this study, we conducted an multicenter prospective cohort study at six tertiary care hospitals, and found that the Ottawa SAH Rule performed well, with an 100% sensitivity, and specificity of 13.6%. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pain Research, Radiology / 12.11.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Alessandro Napoli Dipartimento di Scienze Radiologiche Unità di Terapia con Ultrasuoni Focalizzati Sapienza Università di Roma, Policlinico Umberto I Rome MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Low back pain and sciatica are very common conditions affecting at least 80% of the population (once in life) with detrimental impact on quality of life. Pain cause is often a lumbar disc herniation with sciatic nerve compression. Treatment strategy is primarily conservative (drugs and physical therapy) and when symptoms are persisting for more than 4 consecutive weeks, surgery is advocated. Many patients prefer to avoid surgery for multiple reasons (recurrence rate, risk-related to the intervention and post-surgical sequela). Technology advances with percutaneous techniques allowed more recently to fill the gap between conservative strategy and surgery for the management of lumbar disc herniation and related low back pain extending to the leg(s). Patients are offered local injection for symptoms relief with limited results. Therefore, other non-to-mini invasive approaches are clinically tested for prolonged clinical efficacy. Pulsed radiofrequency is a promising percutaneous approach mainly used for chronic pain. We aimed to test pulsed radiofrequency in patients refractory to conservative treatments, indicated to surgery. Our study demonstrated that radiofrequency with pulsed technique, performed under CT image guidance, is able to control pain in a surgical-free, single session, lasting 10 minutes. The procedure is highly attractive since can be considered nearly risk-free with high rate of success. In our series 80% of patients treated with pulsed radiofrequency resulted pain free (VAS pain score 0 out of 10) at 1, 3 and 12 months follow-up; 90% did not required anymore surgery. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Opiods, Pain Research / 06.11.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sebastiano Mercadante, MD Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit and Pain Relief and Palliative Care Unit La Maddalena Cancer Center Department of Anesthesia, Intensive Care & Emergencies University of Palermo Palermo, Italy MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: There are many clinical experiences suggesting that methadone, when optimally used by skilled physicians, has invaluable properties in the management of cancer pain. Methadone used as first opioid may provide interesting advantages due to the low tendency to induce tolerance, while providing a clinical profile similar to that of other opioids. Moreover, methadone possesses other extra-opioid effects that can be of interest. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Pain Research / 20.10.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Fu-Chi Yang, M.D., Ph.D.Assistant Professor Department of Neurology, Tri-Service General Hospital National Defense Medical Center Taipei, Taiwan MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Migraineurs are likely to suffer from comorbid depression and anxiety. Furthermore, increased migraine frequency is associated with an increased risk of mood/anxiety disorders. It is not distinguished by grouping frequency of migraine attacks, whether it is associated with severity scores of depression and anxiety. Thus, we evaluated the relationship between severity of depression/anxiety and migraine frequency We mainly found that the severity of depression (BDI and HADS-depression scores) and anxiety (HADS anxiety score) were related to migraine frequency, after adjusting confounding factors. (more…)
Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness, Pain Research, UCSD / 19.10.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Erik Groessl PhD Associate Adjunct Professor Family Medicine and Public Health University of California, San Diego MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Chronic low back pain (cLBP) is prevalent among military veterans, but cLBP treatment options have limited benefits and side effects. This has resulted in efforts to reduce opioid use and embrace nonpharmacological pain treatments. Yoga has been shown to improve health outcomes and have few side effects in non-veteran community samples. Our objective was to study the effectiveness and safety of yoga for military veterans with chronic low back pain. In a study of 150 veterans with cLBP, we found that yoga participants had greater reductions in disability and pain than those receiving usual. Opioid medication use declined among all participants, and no serious side effects occurred. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pain Research / 24.09.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mark A. Lumley, Ph.D. Distinguished Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology Training Department of Psychology Wayne State University Detroit, Michigan  48202 and Howard Schubiner, M.D Founder and Director Mind-Body Medicine Center Providence-Providence Park Hospitak Warren, MI 48092  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Fibromyalgia is a condition that afflicts many people with chronic pain and other symptoms, which are often severe. There is no clear evidence of tissue damage or other peripheral causes of the symptoms, and experts agree that the pain is real, and its primary source is the brain. Medications for fibromyalgia have limited effectiveness, so psychological and behavioral therapies are core to treatment. Research documents a strong relationship between emotions and pain, and many patients with FM struggle with negative emotions related to difficult life circumstances, such as trauma, abuse, or relationship conflicts. Ironically, most psychological therapies for FM do not address these problems, but rather teach people how to manage their symptoms. Emerging research, however, demonstrates that therapies that help patients engage rather than avoid their difficult emotional experiences improve both psychological and physical symptoms, including pain. Therefore, we developed an emotion-focused therapy, which we call Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), and compared it to both an active education-based control condition and to the leading psychological intervention for fibromyalgia, cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT). The EAET condition was substantially better on multiple outcomes that the control condition 6 months after treatment. Importantly, although EAET did not differ from CBT on many outcomes, EAET was superior than CBT on reducing widespread and in the percentage of individuals achieving substantial pain reduction (that is, at least 50% pain reduction from baseline). (more…)
Author Interviews, Opiods, Orthopedics, Pain Research, Stanford / 21.08.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tina Hernandez-Boussard, PhD MPH, MS Associate Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Data Science, and Surgery Stanford School of Medicine Stanford, CA 94305-5479 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Opioid addiction is a national crisis.  As surgery is thought to be a gateway to opioid misuse, opioid-sparing approaches for pain management following surgery are a top priority. We conducted a meta-analysis of 39 randomized clinical trials of common non-pharmalogical interventions used for postoperative pain management. We found that acupuncture and electrotherapy following total knee replacement reduced or delayed patients’ opioid use. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pain Research, Pharmacology, PLoS / 17.08.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Harsha Shanthanna MBBS, MD, MSc Associate Professor, Anesthesiology Chronic Pain Physician St Joseph's Healthcare,McMaster University Hamilton, Canada Diplomate in National Board, Anesthesiology (India) Fellow in Interventional Pain Practice (WIP) European Diplomate in Regional Anesthesia and Pain MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Pregabalin (PG) and gabapentin (GB) are increasingly used for nonspecific Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP) despite a lack of evidence. There have been concerns expressed over their increased prescribing for various non cancer pain indications in recent years. Their use requires slow titration to therapeutic doses and establishing maintenance on a long-term basis. With prolonged treatment, the potential gain over possible adverse effects and risks could become unclear. We searched Cochrane, MEDLINE and EMBASE databases for randomized control trials reporting the use of gabapentinoids for chronic lower back pain treatment of 3 months or more in adult patients. (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, Pain Research, Rheumatology / 16.08.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jos Runhaar, PhD Erasmus MC Department of General Practice Rotterdam The Netherlands MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Most international guidelines report an overall lack of efficacy of glucosamine for osteoarthrits. We however know that it is a very heterogeneous disease. Therefore, it is possible that there are certain subgroups of osteoarthritis patients that actually might have effect from glucosamine; for instance subgroups based on different pathologies underlying the clinical presentation, different co-morbidities, or different disease stages. For investigating efficacy in subgroups large sample sizes are needed, and certain methodological techniques are necessary, to get a valid and robust answer. Several years ago, a group of renowned international osteoarthritis researchers started the OA Trial Bank especially for investigating these subgroup effects of osteoarthritis treatments and collect individual patient data of worldwide-performed intervention studies in osteoarthritis patients. When using the individual patient data of multiple studies, it brings us the large sample size and allows us to use the right methods. We do these subgroup analyses in the OA Trial Bank for many different interventions, not just for glucosamine. The subgroup analyses for glucosamine and for corticosteroid injections are published, the others are ongoing (for instance exercise, orthoses and topicals) or planned and still waiting for funding. The study did show, however, that glucosamine can be extremely beneficial for pets, and specifically dogs who have joint related issues. Knowing the most valuable sources of glucosamine for dogs is important, as it can be extracted and gained from multiple sources, and each have their own varied levels of quality and potency. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cleveland Clinic, Orthopedics, Pain Research, Surgical Research / 01.08.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael A. Mont, MD Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Cleveland Clinic Cleveland, OH  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Postoperative pain after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a major hurdle for both the patients and the orthopaedists. Many analgesic modalities are currently in use, and can be used alone or in combination in order to augment their effect. Addition of local anesthetic analgesia has been shown to improve pain control and reduce opioid consumption during postoperative period. However, the effects of this analgesia tend to dissipate with time, with the longest duration of action (bupivacaine) of approximately 12 hours. Therefore, long acting local anesthetic (liposomal bupivacaine) has been developed in order to expand the duration of effectiveness of pain relief for up to 96 hours. Many studies evaluated the effectiveness of this anesthetic and demonstrated contradictory results, however, they did not use the same methods and infiltration technique. Therefore, we conducted a prospective, randomized, double-blind, controlled study at 16 hospitals using optimal infiltration techniques. Our study demonstrated significant improvement in pain, decreased opioid consumption, increased time to first opioid rescue, more opioid free patients in liposomal bupivacaine cohort. In addition, there were no unexpected safety concerns. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Opiods, Pain Research, Primary Care / 17.07.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jane M. Liebschutz, MD, MPH Associate Professor of Medicine Section of General Internal Medicine Boston University School of Medicine Boston, Massachusetts MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The number of patients receiving opioids for chronic pain has risen over the past 2 decades in the US, in parallel with an increase in opioid use disorder. The CDC and professional medical societies have created clinical guidelines to improve the safety of opioid prescribing, yet individual prescribers can find them onerous to implement. We developed an intervention to change clinical practice to support primary care physicians who prescribe the majority of opioids for chronic pain. The intervention included 4 elements- a nurse care manager to help assess, educate and monitor patients, an electronic registry to keep track of patient data and produce physician level reports, an individualized educational session for the physician by an opioid prescribing expert based on the physician-specific practice information and online resources to help with decision-making for opioid prescribing (www.mytopcare.org). We tested whether the intervention would improve adherence to guidelines, decrease opioid doses and decrease early refills, as a marker of potential prescription opioid misuse among 985 patients of 53 primary care clinicians in four primary care practices. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Urology / 28.06.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Baoyan Liu, MD Guang’an Men Hospital China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Beijing, China MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The prevalence of stress urinary incontinence(SUI) is as high as 49% and varies according to the population studied and the definition of stress urinary incontinence. SUI causes psychological burden, affects relationships, lowers physical productivity, and decreases quality of life in women. Yet, few effective therapies are available for treating stress urinary incontinence. In this randomized clinical trial that included 504 women, the mean decrease in urine leakage, measured by the 1-hour pad test from baseline to week 6, was 9.9 g with electroacupuncture vs 2.6 g with sham electroacupuncture, a significant difference. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pain Research, Rheumatology, Sleep Disorders / 20.06.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Atul A. Deodhar, MD, MRCP, FACP, FACR Professor of Medicine Medical Director, Rheumatology Clinics Medical Director, Immunology Infusion Center Oregon Health & Science University  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The GO-ALIVE study (CNTO148AKS3001) is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of golimumab, an anti-TNFα monoclonal antibody, administered intravenously (IV), in adult patients with active ankylosing spondylitis (AS). The primary objective is to evaluate the efficacy of golimumab 2 mg/kg in patients with active AS by assessing the reduction in signs and symptoms of AS. The secondary objectives include assessing efficacy related to improving physical function, range of motion, health-related quality of life, and other health outcomes. A total of 208 patients who had a diagnosis of definite  ankylosing spondylitis (per modified New York criteria) and Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) ≥4, total back pain visual analogue scale (VAS) ≥4, and CRP ≥0.3 mg/dL were randomized.  Patients were treated with IV golimumab (n=105) at Weeks 0, 4, and every 8 weeks through Week 52 or placebo (n=103) at Weeks 0, 4, and 12, with crossover to IV golimumab at Week 16 and through Week 52. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Pain Research, Pharmacology, UT Southwestern / 01.05.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Una Makris MD, MSc Clinical Investigator at the VA North Texas Health System VA North Texas Health Care System Assistant Professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center Departments on Internal Medicine and Clinical Sciences Dr. Makris is a Rheumatologist, clinically, and spends the majority of time focused on clinical research investigating how to improve outcomes for adults with back pain. MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Back pain is the most common type of musculoskeletal (MSK) pain. We know that expenditures for back pain exceed $100 billion each year (and this was in 2005). Back pain results in tremendous disability (including reduced mobility) and impaired quality of life (not exclusive to physical consequences, but also including important psychosocial repercussions). We also know that statins are prescribed very often, and frequently in younger populations who are active. Some reports suggest that statins may have a protective effect on  musculoskeletal conditions such as back pain. (more…)
Addiction, Genetic Research, Opiods / 24.04.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Maneesh Sharma, M.D Director of Pain Medicine MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Director of the Interventional Pain Institute Baltimore, Maryland MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Opioid abuse in chronic pain patients is a major public health issue, with rapidly increasing addiction rates and deaths from unintentional overdose more than quadrupling since 1999. Just in the last year alone according to the CDC, synthetic opioid deaths have increased 72%. As a practicing interventional pain specialist, I am confronted with the challenge of assessing patient risk for opioids as I evaluate multi-modal approaches to effective pain management. Existing tools are inadequate, as they either rely on a urine toxicology test to evaluate a patient’s current potential substance abuse as a predictor of future abuse, or on a patient’s honesty to fill out a questionnaire. We know that many patients who are not currently abusing illicit drugs or misusing prescription medications can develop prescription opioid tolerance, dependence, or abuse—especially with prolonged opioid therapy. Furthermore, we know that patients who are looking to abuse medications or divert those prescriptions will obviously lie on questionnaires. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pain Research / 18.04.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Paul Shekelle, MD PhD MPH Chief of General internal Medicine VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Back pain is one of the commonest symptoms for adult patients to seek health care. For a number of years now, VA has had chiropractic care integrated into the ambulatory care available at many large VA medical centers. Most patients referred from VA primary care to chiropractic clinic have chronic back pain. VA was interested in an evidence synthesis of the use of spinal manipulative therapy in acute low back pain. Spinal manipulative therapy is a manual technique delivered by almost all chiropractors, but also delivered by some physical therapists, osteopathic physicians, and some medical doctors. The main findings are that spinal manipulative therapy is associated with, on average, a modest beneficial effect on pain and function. However, there are large difference sin outcome across studies, and this suggests that some patients may respond much better, and other may respond not at all. (more…)
Author Interviews, Opiods, Pain Research / 19.03.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Sommer Hammoud MD ABOS Board Certified Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Surgery Thomas Jefferson University  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The background for this exhibit stemmed from the growing problem of prescription opioid abuse in the United States.  As we saw this issue developing, we aimed to investigate the history behind this epidemic, what information we have now to fight it, and what information we need in the future to improve care our patients. Our main findings for each of those aims are the following: 1) It would appear that a large push at the end of the last century led to a lower threshold to prescribe opiates in the effort to control pain, leading to the current opioid epidemic 2) Mulitmodal methods of pain control and the expanding skill of regional anesthesia can be used to help decrease narcotic use and thus limit exposure to narcotics, and 3) Future research needs to focus on the psychologic aspect of patients' ability to manage pain and we should strive to be able to categorize patients in order to create an individualized pain management protocol which will most effectively manage pain. (more…)
Addiction, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 10.03.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Carl Stevenson, PhD Assistant Professor of Neuroscience BSc Animal Science Admissions Tutor Local Group Rep, British Neuroscience Association School of Biosciences University of Nottingham Loughborough, UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Anxiety-related and substance abuse disorders can be serious forms of mental illness that are not always treated effectively by psychological therapies or medications. One strategy to enhance their treatment is to boost the effects of psychological therapy by combining it with medication. This study reviewed the literature on the effects of cannabidiol, a chemical found in the cannabis plant, in preclinical models of these disorders. Cannabidiol is safe to use in humans and doesn’t cause the ‘high’ associated with cannabis. This means that cannabidiol might be useful for treating certain symptoms without the unwanted side effects linked to medical cannabis. Our review confirmed that cannabidiol reduces fear and anxiety in various preclinical models, when given on its own or in conjunction with behavioural interventions that model psychological treatment for anxiety-related disorders. This could show that exploring the option of cbd for anxiety could be a step forward in treating the condition. Our review suggested that it can also reduce relapse in some preclinical models of addiction, although research looking at the effects of cannabidiol in substance abuse disorders is still in its infancy. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Pain Research, Stroke / 08.03.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alessandro Pezzini, MD, FESO Professore Associato di Neurologia Dipartimento di Scienze Cliniche e Sperimentali Clinica Neurologica Università degli Studi di Brescia Italia MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Scarce reports have suggested that a relation might exist between migraine and cervical artery dissection (CEAD), the most frequent cause of ischemic stroke in young adults in Western countries. However, data available so far were obtained from few studies conducted on small cohorts of patients, which limits the generalizability of their findings. In our study we analysed the data from the Italian Project on Stroke in Young Adults (IPSYS) project, one of the largest registries of young ischemic stroke patients, and observed that migraine, especially the subtype without aura was strongly and independently associated to CEAD. This seems particularly true for men and for people younger than 39 years. (more…)
Author Interviews, Electronic Records, Opiods, Pain Research / 07.03.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michelle S. Keller, MPH, PhD Candidate Health Policy and Management Cedars-Sinai Los Angeles CA 90048 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this new funding award? Response: Research shows that treating and managing chronic pain is tough, and it can be hard for patients and their physicians to be on the same page. Chronic pain touches so many facets of people’s lives—relationships, mental health, sleep, work—that treating it in a 15-minute visit can lead to a lot of frustration and disappointment. Our hope is that by arming patients and clinicians with evidence-based tools, we can help foster a better dialogue about what is ultimately important to patients, how to achieve fully functional lives while managing chronic pain. We’re testing two different types of communication tools: electronic health record alerts pointing physicians to guidelines when they write opioid prescriptions and patient portal-based tools that can help patients prepare for visits and become active, engaged partners in their care. (more…)
Author Interviews, Dermatology, Johns Hopkins, Pain Research / 24.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Xinzhong Dong PhD The Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience and Center for Sensory Biology Howard Hughes Medical Institute Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Baltimore, MD 21205 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: It is a puzzle that troubles the field for many years that how pain and itch, two closely related sensations (once thought as one sensation), are differentiated by the nervous systems. Coding of pain and itch are heatedly debated for decades. The current specificity theory suggests that these two kinds of signals are carried by separate pathways, with some interactions, for example pain can inhibit itch and that explains why we all scratch to inhibit pain. It is true in the periphery (our previous study indicate a small population of neurons in the periphery only codes for itch sensation), but now our study suggests that there could be more crosstalk between these two sensations in the central than we expected. People might not notice in real life, but in human psychophysical studies, well-isolated experimental environments, when human subjects are given itchy substances, they typically report intense itch sensations accompanied by minor noxious sensations, such as pricking, stinging and burning. Our new leaky gate model suggest in certain circumstances intense itch signals can trigger minor pain sensations, which can explain such phenomenon. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Pain Research, Radiation Therapy / 14.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rachel McDonald, MD(C) Department of Radiation Oncology Odette Cancer Centre Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Toronto, Ontario, Canada MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Radiation treatment has been demonstrated in numerous studies to provide effective and timely pain relief to those suffering from painful bone metastases. However, as a palliative treatment, the goal should be not only to reduce pain but also to maintain and even improve quality of life. To date, studies have not effectively demonstrated this; most of these have included either small sample sizes or utilize questionnaires that aren’t tailored to the palliative cancer population with bone metastases. We aimed to determine how soon after radiation treatment one can expect an improvement in quality of life. Our results showed that patients who had a pain response to radiation also had significantly greater improvements in pain, pain characteristics, functional interference, and psychosocial aspects of well-being at day 10 post-treatment. Further improvements in most domains of quality of life were found for responders at day 42. (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, Orthopedics, Pain Research, Surgical Research / 08.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jonas Bloch Thorlund Associate Professor (MSc, PhD) Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics Research Unit for Musculoskeletal Function and Physiotherapy University of Southern Denmark MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Arthroscopic partial meniscectomy is a very common knee surgery. Research evidence has seriously questioned the effect of this type of surgery for degenerative meniscal tears in middle-aged and older patients. Most young patients with traumatic meniscal injury (from sports or similar) also undergo this type of surgery. There is a general understanding that young patients with traumatic tears experience larger improvements in patient reported pain, function and quality of life. However, evidence for this presumption is sparse. (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, End of Life Care, Opiods, Pain Research / 21.01.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Katherine Irene Pettus, PhD, OSB Advocacy Officer International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care Vice Chair, Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs Secretary NGO Committee on Ageing, Geneva MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The background for this study is analysis of the three international drug control treaties, official attendance and participation at meetings of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs for the past four years, ongoing discussion of national opioid consumption rates with INCB, and years of home hospice visits in developing countries. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pain Research, Pediatrics, Vaccine Studies / 13.12.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Anna Taddio PhD Professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy University of Toronto Adjunct senior scientist and clinical pharmacist at SickKids MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We do not know enough about how well different pain interventions work over time and when combined together. In this study, we compared the effectiveness of interventions when layered together, starting from simplest to most complicated in terms of implementation, in the first year of life in infants undergoing routine vaccinations. We compared 4 different treatments: 1. placebo (sham), 2. Educational video for parents about how to soothe their infants, 3) video and sucrose (sugar water), 4) video and sucrose and liposomal lidocaine cream. (more…)
Author Interviews, Orthopedics, Pain Research, Smoking, Surgical Research / 31.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. David Kusin MD University of Nebraska Medical Center Omaha MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: There is a wealth of research showing that cigarette smoking impairs healing through various mechanisms, including microvascular injury. Some evidence also suggests that tobacco use results in direct neurological injury to the peripheral and central nervous systems. Many studies have also shown that smoking reduces fusion rates and time to fusion in orthopedic surgery, including cervical surgery. Prior to our work, only a few high quality studies had been conducted to investigate prognostic factors in patients undergoing surgery for cervical myelopathy, and these identified smoking as a risk factor for a poorer outcome. The purpose of our study was to investigate this relationship further. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 87 nonsmokers and 47 smokers and correlated postoperative change in Nurick score (a measure of severity of cervical myelopathy from 0-5 with 5 being the worst) with smoking status. After controlling for age, sex, diabetes, duration of preoperative symptoms, severity of preoperative symptoms, signal change on MRI, surgical approach, number of spinal levels operated on, and alcohol use, we found that smokers had a significantly decreased improvement in Nurick score. Nonsmokers improved by 1.5 points whereas smokers only improved by 0.6 points. We also found that this was a dose response relationship, such that those with a history of greater tobacco use by pack years or packs per day had a greater decrease in improvement postoperatively. Interestingly, we found no correlation between tobacco use and preoperative severity of symptoms. (more…)
Anesthesiology, Author Interviews, Opiods, Pain Research, Surgical Research / 18.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Bryan Sakamoto MD, PhD Department of Anesthesia Richard L. Roudebush, Veterans Affairs Medical Center Department of Anesthesia Indiana University School of Medicine Indianapolis, Indiana MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Liposomal bupivacaine is a novel extended-duration anesthetic that has recently become a popular option in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) for post-operative pain management. Although liposomal bupivacaine is widely used, it is unknown if the benefits justify the cost in the veteran population at our institution. The main purpose of this medication use study was to evaluate the cost verses benefit of using this agent in our veteran patient population. (more…)