Empathetic Care By Physicians Provides Better Pain Relief Than Most Other Modalities

PainRelief.com Interview with:
John C. Licciardone, DO, MS, MBA, FACPM
Regents Professor and Richards-Cohen Distinguished Chair in Clinical Research
Department of Family Medicine, MET-568
University of North Texas Health Science Center
Fort Worth, TX 76107

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: The Pain Registry for Epidemiological, Clinical, and Interventional Studies and Innovation focuses on the patient-physician relationship and its association with chronic pain treatment and outcomes.

Previous studies involving physician empathy often have been limited to pain clinics and involved short-term follow-up. Our study aimed to study the impact of physician empathy on outcomes among patients with chronic low back pain in community settings throughout the United States over 12 months of follow-up.

Frequent Musculoskeletal Pain Linked to Early Retirement

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr Nils Niederstrasser
Senior Lecturer
Department of Psychology
University of Portsmouth

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: The number of people living with musculoskeletal pain increases with age, but few studies have specifically focused on the effects of chronic pain on the employment status of older populations.

Neuropathy: Repeated High Concentration Capsaicin Patches Provided Back Pain Relief and Reduced Need for Opioids

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Kai-Uwe Kern MD, PhD
Institute of Pain Medicine/Pain Practice
Wiesbaden, Germany

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: In recent studies a progressive response to high-concentration capsaicin patch (HCCP) with repeated treatment was observed, meaning that patients with insufficient pain relief after the first application of HCCP, still may respond to a second, third, or even fourth application. Based on these latest findings, and also on my personal clinical experience, we aimed to systematically analyse the pool of patients in my Pain Practice with at least two HCCP treatments.

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Back Pain: Study Analyzes Course of Acute, Subacute and Chronic Low Back Pain

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Prof. Lorimer Moseley PhD

DSc, FAAHMS, FACP, HonFFPMANZCA, HonMAPA, BAppSc(Phty)(Hons)
Professor of Clinical Neurosciences
Foundation Chair in Physiotherapy
University of South Australia 
Chair of PainAdelaide Stakeholders’ Consortium

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: 12 years ago, members of our group gathered all the research studies that had followed people with back pain for a year and used all the combined data to get an idea of how well people with back pain do. That big study concluded that if you have had back pain for less than 6 weeks, you were highly likely to do really well and that if you had back pain for more than 6 weeks, things were still likely to go pretty well. That made us think ’so why do so many people have chronic back pain?’

Perhaps, by lumping sub-acute back pain (6-12 weeks) in with chronic back pain (>12 weeks) that study 12 years ago made outcomes for people with over 12 weeks of back pain look better than they really were. We decided to repeat that big study from 12 years ago but because there were likely to be many more research studies, we decided to divide the participants into three groups: those with back pain for less than 6 weeks, those with back pain for 6-12 weeks and those with back pain for more than 12 weeks. 

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Unequal Access to Chiropractic Pain Relief Care for Back Pain in Patients with Opioid Use Disorder

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Patience Moyo, Ph.D
Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice
Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research
Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice
Brown University School of Public Health

Patience Moyo, Ph.D
Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice
Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research
Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice
Brown University School of Public Health

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Clinical practice guidelines recommend nonpharmacologic treatments as first-line therapies for managing chronic pain. However, little is known about the use of guideline-recommended pain therapies and whether use varies in demographic subgroups. Individuals with co-occurring chronic pain and opioid use disorder deserve particular consideration because of their increased risk of harm from opioids and other pharmacologic therapies combined with their susceptibility to social and structural barriers to accessing health care.

We sought to understand whether the well-established racial and ethnic inequities in pain management extend to individuals with opioid use disorder and to nonpharmacologic pain treatments, specifically physical therapy and chiropractic care.

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Cognitive Functional Therapy: Clinical and Cost-Effective Pain Reduction For Chronic, Disabling Low Back Pain

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Peter Kent
Adjunct Associate Professor
Curtin School of Allied Health
Curtin University, Perth
WA, Australia

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Although there had been clinical trials of Cognitive Functional Therapy (CFT) with promising results, there had not been a fully powered trial comparing CFT with usual care, nor any trials in Australia. Previous trials had included a maximum of 3 CFT clinicians, whereas the RESTORE trial included the training of 18 physiotherapists to CFT competency who had minimal prior exposure to CFT. No previous CFT trial had included an evaluation of 6161615g8cost effectiveness of CFT, nor examined whether the use of wearable motion sensor biofeedback might enhance the effect of CFT.

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Sciatica: Surgical Treatment May Provide Only Temporary Pain Relief

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Chang Liu
Researcher, PHD Student
University of Sydney

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Sciatica is a common condition caused by lumbar nerve root compression and/or inflammation, usually due to a herniated disc. Non-surgical treatments, such as exercise, are recommended as the first step, with pharmacological and interventional options available if needed.

Surgery, specifically discectomy, is a common treatment for sciatica but evidence supporting its effectiveness is uncertain. 

High School Students Risk Back Pain with Prolonged Texting and Cell Phone Use

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Prof. Dr. Alberto De Vitta

Department of Physical Therapy
Centro Universitário das Faculdades Integradas de Ourinhos
Água do Cateto, Ourinhos
Brazil

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: This research is part of a line of research that addresses the intersectoriality between education and health, in which it seeks to study the various risk factors of the educational environment that can influence the health of schoolchildren.

PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?

Response: In this study the main results were:  There is high prevalence and incidence of Thoracic Spine Pain (TSP) in high school students and the TSP is associated with the female sex, mental health problems, and body posture while using cell phones, tablets, and PCs as well as with the duration of use of cell phone and tablet.

Study Finds Uncertain Effectiveness of Common Medications for Low Back Pain Relief

PainRelief.com Interview with:

Dr. Wewege

Dr Michael Wewege, PhD
Research Fellow – Neuroscience Research Australia

Prof. McAuley

Prof James McAuley, PhD
Director – Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia,
Professor – School of Health Sciences,
University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia




PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: We conducted this study because medicines are the most common treatment for adults with acute non-specific low back pain. One of the most important questions is “What is the best medicine to use?” We wanted to compare the medicines with each other because this is the information patients and physicians want to know, but previous research has focused on only comparing medicines to placebo. Physicians are deciding between these medicines based on their clinical expertise; we hoped to support their decision making with a rigorous piece of research.

Study Evaluates Equine-Facilitated Therapy For Back Pain Relief

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Sanna Mattila-Rautiainen
Biomedicine, Sports and Exercise Medicine
University of Eastern Finland

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: The background of our study is to evaluate the effect of 12 weeks Equine Facilitated Physical therapy intervention for Chronic Low Back Pain patients´ functional impairments that were self-assessed, to their wellbeing and amount of pain.