Patients with a lumbar disc herniation (LDH) and associated back pain may experience improvements in back pain, leg pain, and disability 12 months after single- or 2-level lumbar discectomy, according to a longitudinal observational cohort study published in Spine Journal. Using data from the Quality and Outcomes Database, investigators assessed 2262 adult patients with LDH with baseline scores […]
Read MoreIn a preliminary study published in Neuromodulation, high-frequency spinal cord stimulation was found to be more effective in treating chronic pain than conventional stimulation. Although spinal cord stimulation (SCS) effectively alleviates chronic axial back pain in 50% to 70% of cases, it is accompanied by adverse effects (eg, frequent paresthesias). In the current pilot study, investigators sought to […]
Read MoreAuthor(s): Jeffery MM et al. BMJ. 2018 Aug 1. Opioid use has not significantly declined over the past 10 years despite efforts to educate prescribers about the risks of opioid abuse, with over half of disabled Medicare beneficiaries using opioids each year, according to a recent retrospective cohort study published in the BMJ. “We found very high […]
Read MoreA database analysis comprising more than 25,000 patients has concluded that the STOP-BANG questionnaire has cross-sectional construct validity, in that greater proportions of patients with intermediate and high STOP-BANG risk scores had known diagnoses of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Despite this positive finding, the study also revealed that STOP-BANG risk strata had only weak correlations […]
Read MorePatients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may be more likely to experience chronic neck pain, lower back pain, and migraine than individuals without COPD, according to a study published in The Clinical Journal of Pain. This cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the prevalence of chronic pain in patients with COPD compared with healthy adults age >35 […]
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