The Benefits of Exercise as a Treatment for Musculoskeletal Pain

Exercise Your Demons

Nonpharmacological interventions are increasingly being prescribed for people with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Current evidence on the role of regular physical activity and exercise in the management of chronic musculoskeletal pain (eg, fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain...

Widespread Pain and Fibromyalgia

While we have increasing understanding of the mechanisms of musculoskeletal pain, this knowledge has translated into treatments that so far have left many patients and healthcare providers dissatisfied. This is particularly true for fibromyalgia syndrome (FM) and chronic widespread pain that...

Assessment and Management of Low Back Pain

Chronic low back pain (cLBP) is a pervasive problem, consistently among the top 5 most common reasons for primary care visits and among the most prominent painful conditions. Although some patients with cLBP have clear pathoanatomic causes of pain, for many there is no clear association between pain...

Peripheral and Central Mechanisms in Knee Osteoarthritis

Musculoskeletal (MSK) pain conditions are the leading cause of disability worldwide, and this year’s American Pain Society track will explore the latest evidence addressing measurement, mechanisms, and management of MSK pain conditions. Among the most prevalent MSK pain conditions is knee...

Building Brain Resilience Through Mindfulness Meditation

This presentation will focus on mindfulness meditation as an approach to building resilience and will highlight the speaker’s findings regarding the neural mechanisms whereby mindfulness might improve pain by building brain resilience. (Recorded at PAINWeek 2017)

Current Issues Impacting Spinal Manipulative Therapy for Pain

Manual therapy has long been used to treat spinal pain. Spinal manipulative therapy, in particular, has received special emphasis as many providers use it as a featured part of their practice. It has a favorable side effect profile, but there continues to be healthy debate on whether it is an...

The Brain or the Body: What Is the Target for Pain Treatment

Historically, pain has been viewed as a symptom of perturbations in the tissues of the body, such that effective treatments would address the damage to the affected body region and pain relief would ensue. However, both clinical experience and the scientific literature are replete with examples of...

Neurochemical Imaging as a Probe of Chronic Pain and Its Treatment

Accumulating evidence suggests that widespread pain syndromes such as fibromyalgia display a generalized disturbance in central nervous system pain processing. Multiple lines of research have identified that the locus for many functional chronic pain disorders, including fibromyalgia, pelvic pain...

Approaches to the Treatment of Chronic Pain

Recent advances in neuromodulation approaches have resulted in several promising applications for the treatment of various chronic pain disorders. This course will review several of the more popular applications, including transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcutaneous vagus nerve...

Acupuncture Analgesia: Therapy or Sham?

Acupuncture has been used for centuries to treat pain; however, multiple recent randomized controlled trials of acupuncture in chronic pain disorders have largely shown mixed findings. In most of these studies acupuncture is no better than sham/placebo. Moreover, many basic as well as clinical...