Video- vs Robotic-Assisted Thoracic Surgery

In this study, reported in Cureus, 92 patients were put into 2 groups based on whether their thoracic surgery was video assisted (VATS) or robotic assisted (RATS). All had operations anywhere from 6 months to 2 years before the study. Quality of life measures—pain/discomfort, self-care, anxiety...

Gender, Mast Cells, & OA

The Daily Dose has reported on knee health often this month—see DD1 and DD2—and now researchers report that, post knee replacement surgery, excised synovial tissue from women contains more mast cells than men, leading to more pain due to inflammatory chemicals produced by those cells. The...

Understanding Pain Pathways

Dr. David Glick has been presenting a course on pain pathways at PAINWeek for years. It is always well attended, and always pertinent. Why? Effective clinical management of pain requires an understanding of the underlying mechanisms responsible for its generation. A skillful approach—based upon...

The Psychiatrist As Pain Management Specialist

Are enough practitioners aware that psychiatrists can be pain management specialists? The psychiatric pain management approach may be very different than that of a PM&R physician or neurologist. What works? What should primary care physicians, and so many others, know? PAINWeek asked Dr. Michael...

Optimizing Patient Outcomes: Teamwork!

Teamwork makes the dream work…and very probably lessens the pain burden on a patient. Dr. Mark Garofoli gives his view of the importance of collaborative care. He is an assistant professor and clinical pain management pharmacist at the West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown.

Genicular Nerve Injections

The journal of Arthritis & Rheumatology reports on a pain management procedure for knee osteoarthritis. In a randomized, placebo controlled 12 week trial, 59 patients received either injections of saline (placebo) or 3 injections of celestone chronodose and bupivacaine to the genicular nerves...

Which Is Better for Pain Relief?

A retrospective review of high or mid thoracic vertebral compression fractures (VCF) examined outcomes after either high viscosity cement (HVC) vertebroplasty (VP) or low viscosity cement (LVC) balloon kyphoplasty (BKP) repairs. 114 patients in a single tertiary medical center were included. Outcome...

Each Affects the Other: Migraine & Sleep

Over 35 clinical studies from journal articles and meta-analyses were included in a literature review of chronic migraine’s impact on the quality of sleep. In the journal of Nature and Science of Sleep, common sleep disturbances were analyzed to determine the relationship to chronic migraine.

The Adenosine Receptor System

Adenosine is a ubiquitous signaling molecule that has several physiological roles. Subtypes are associated with analgesia and have anti-inflammatory properties. Dr. Paul Christo, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explains how it works, its mechanism of action...

Adrenaline Receptors

The journal of Science reports findings from researchers accessing chemotypes from a virtual library of over 300 million molecules. The authors of the study “computationally docked each virtual molecule into the highly similar α_2BAR binding site, prioritizing those that physically fit and that were...