Category Archives: Pain-Relief

Patient Preferred Music Therapy Reduced Pain in Real World Settings

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Seneca Block, Ph.D(c), MT-BC  
Board Certified Music Therapist and
The Lauren Rich Fine Endowed Director for Expressive Therapies
University Hospitals Connor Whole Health

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

Response: University Hospitals Connor Whole Health has developed an extensive network of inpatient music therapy programs through out 8 major community medical centers across North Eastern Ohio. Music therapy is an evidence-based practice that was used through out these locations to provide front-line non pharmacological treatment of pain, stress and anxiety.

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JAMA Study Finds Clinicians Not Maximizing Opportunities to Initiate Buprenorphine Treatment For Patients With Opioid Addiction

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Kao-Ping Chua, MD, PhD
Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center
Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School
Ann Arbor MI 48109

Kao-Ping Chua

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

Response: Opioid overdose deaths are at a record high in the U.S. Many opioid overdose deaths can be prevented by medications for opioid use disorder, such as buprenorphine, a drug that can prescribed in office settings. However, buprenorphine cannot prevent opioid overdose deaths if patients are never started on the medication or only stay on the medication for a short time. For that reason, rates of buprenorphine initiation and retention are critical metrics for measuring how well the U.S. health care system is responding to the opioid epidemic.

At the time we started our study, several other research groups had evaluated U.S. rates of buprenorphine initiation and retention using data through 2020. However, more recent national data were lacking. We felt that this was an important knowledge gap given the many changes in society that have occurred since 2020. For example, it was possible that the relaxation of social distancing measures during 2021 and 2022 might have reduced barriers to health care visits, thereby increasing opportunities to initiate treatment for opioid addiction with buprenorphine.

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EVALI – Vaping and Lung Injury – Storylines on Popular Medical Dramas May Change Behavior

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Beth Hoffman, PhD, MPH (she/her)
Postdoctoral Associate
Center for Social Dynamics and Community Health
Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences
University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health

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

Response: Previous studies suggested that hearing about EVALI in the news might stop people from vaping or get them to quit, but there had yet to be research examining if storylines on fictional medical television shows could have the same effects. There had also been few studies to date leveraging Twitter data, which allowed us to see how viewers were reacting to the storylines in real-time, in their organic viewing environment.

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

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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.

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Study Evaluates Equine-Facilitated Therapy For Back Pain Relief

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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.

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Knee OsteoArthritis: Study Finds Radiofrequency Nerve Ablation Provides Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Kaitlin Carrato, M.D., Chief Resident in Interventional Radiology
MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, and
John B. Smirniotopoulos, M.D., Interventional Radiologist
MedStar Georgetown University Hospital

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What is the main indication for the RFA procedure?

Response: Roughly one in four U.S. adults have knee pain due to arthritis that interferes with their everyday lives and activities. A treatment called genicular nerve radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a safe and effective option for reducing pain from osteoarthritis of the knee, one of the most common joints affected by osteoarthritis. Interventional radiologists perform genicular nerve RFA using image guidance to place probe needles next to nerves around the knee that send pain signals to the brain. The primary indication for this procedure is chronic pain that has not been sufficiently managed by other treatments, prescription medications, physical therapy, or for patients with persistent pain even after knee replacement.

This study examined patient demographics, prior surgical history, degree of osteoarthritis and other clinical characteristics that may affect how well RFA reduces knee pain. We measured post-procedure pain in 36 patients using the visual analog scale (VAS) and the Western Ontario McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis (WOMAC) pain scale. We then evaluated whether pain reduction levels were influenced by demographics and clinical characteristics.

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Chronic Multifocal Pain Linked to Accelerated Cognitive Decline

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Yiheng Tu
CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health
Institute of Psychology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing, China

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

Response: Chronic pain (CP) is a leading source of disability worldwide. Multisite chronic pain, where pain is experienced in multiple anatomical locations, affects almost half of chronic pain patients and has been found to have a greater burden on patients’ overall health. However, However, it has not been clear whether people with multisite chronic pain suffered from aggravated neurocognitive abnormalities.

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Painful Bunions: Risk Factors for Failure of Corrective Surgery

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Dr. Johnson

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Matthew Johnson, D.P.M.
Assistant Professor
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

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

Response: There is a paucity of literature attempting to characterize risk factors for nonunion of the Lapidus bunionectomy.

PainRelief.com: Would you briefly describe what is meant by a bunion?

Bunion with cornDermNet NZ image

Response: Bunions are a chronic painful bump that forms on the base of the big toe when the long metatarsal bone shifts toward the inside of the foot and the phalanx bones of the big toe angle toward the second toe.



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Twin Study Finds Cannabis Legalization Did Not Cause Substantial Psychological Harm in Adults

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Stephanie Zellers PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher, Kaprio Group, FIMM
Dr. Zellers began this research as a graduate student at the
University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG)

Dr. Zellers PhD

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

Response: Proponents and opponents of cannabis legalization respectively cite various potential benefits and harms that these policies may cause. Many studies have evaluated these outcomes, but drawing causal conclusions is challenging due to the many confounds that may better explain observed effects.

 We investigated the effects of cannabis legalization on a broad range of psychological outcomes, like substance use, psychiatric symptoms, general functioning in daily life, and cognitive ability. We used a longitudinal twin sample with twin pairs living in different types of states (recreationally legal vs. recreationally illegal) to draw causally informative conclusions. Because identical twins share 100% of their genes, as well as environmental factors like the family rearing, SES, and community norms, co-twin control studies can rule out many alternative explanations for an observed relationship.

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Bisexuals Found to Use More and Varied Cannabis Products

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Carrie Cuttler, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
The Health & Cognition (THC) Lab
Department of Psychology
Washington State University

Dr. Cuttler

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

Response: While we know that sexual minorities (such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.) individuals use many substances, including cannabis, more than heterosexual individuals, we don’t know very much about patterns of sexual minorities’ cannabis use or why sexual minorities are motivated to use cannabis. We also don’t know as much as we should about how cannabis use is related to mental health among sexual minorities. Our study used data from Project ART (Addictions Research Team) to examine these questions. The data were collected from 10 different universities across the United States, and we included data from almost 5,000 young adults (aged 18-30) in this study. People answered questions about their cannabis use, motivations for using cannabis, mental health symptoms, and also indicated their sexual attraction on a scale. The majority of our sample identified their sexual attraction as exclusively heterosexual, a small number indicated exclusively same-sex attraction, and almost a quarter indicated that their sexual attraction was somewhere between those two (the group classified as bisexual).

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