PainRelief.com Interview with: Orit Karnieli-Miller, PhD Associate Professor Head of the Department of Medical Education, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Karnieli-Miller
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response:In recent years Medical clowns have been more and more integrated into hospitals. Still, there needs to be more understanding of their roles, therapeutic goals, and skills. This understanding is necessary both to help professionalize medical clowning and train them and allow other health professionals to work well with them.
To do this, we systematically analyzed medical clowns’ skills within three typical challenging encounters: with an adolescent who is in pain, not willing to do recommended treatment exercise; with an adolescent and a physiotherapist in a painful treatment session; and with a mother of a sick child.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Donovan Maust, M.D., M.S. Associate Professor, Psychiatry University of Michigan Medical School
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Benzodiazepine prescribing has been quite persistent and even increasing among middle aged adults even as we’ve learned more about the associated harms.
To develop effective interventions to address prescribing, it would be helpful to understand how clinicians make their prescribing decisions. But then it is a problem if you ask clinicians about a particular behavior (e.g., prescribing) but don’t have actual objective data about their prescribing behavior.
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Each year, the ADA surveys dentists and consumers around emerging issues or trends in healthcare. As legalization and use of marijuana continues to increase, oral health issues around marijuana use are beginning to emerge. This, combined with a lack of awareness and understanding of the potential adverse health effects of routine marijuana use, was the reason for including it in our survey work.
PainRelief.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: Because legalized marijuana, whether personal or medicinal, is still relatively new, people may not be aware of the effects marijuana can have on oral health and dental visits. Readers should be aware that marijuana use can effect oral health in general as well as limit the care delivered at dental visits if used before an appointment.
Dentists and patients should also take away the importance of open conversation about marijuana use during dental visits. Health history updates can be a natural place to start an open dialogue.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Dror Robinson, M.D., Ph.D Department of Orthopedics, Hasharon Hospital Rabin Medical Center Petah Tikva, Israel
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response:The background of the study is my concern as an orthopedic surgeon, regarding the optimal pain relief therapy for low back pain. I am interested in particular with patients who failed prior interventions, either pharmaceutical or surgical. These patients are an unfortunately growing group of patients without a good therapeutic option. Most of them become chronic pain patients with the resultant multi-domain dysfunction both physical and mental.
Cannabis appears to be able to allow both mental recovery and physical function recovery in such patients. The main findings in the current study is that in patients with chronic pain due to low back pathology inhaled high-THC cannabis therapy is superior to extract high-CBD cannabis therapy. Maximal therapeutic effect is reached after 18 months of therapy and appears to require high THC concentrations as compared with more balanced THC:CBD chemovars.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Thérése Jönsson, PT, PhD Research group, Sport Sciences Department of Health Sciences Lund University
Dr. Jönsson
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease and affects more than 300 million people worldwide. Exercise combined with patient education and weight control, if needed is the first-line treatment for OA. Traditionally, first-line treatment has been provided as a face-to-face intervention, requiring the patient to physically visit a primary care clinic or similar.
To increase access to healthcare for the wider community, digital health care interventions are recommended by the World Health Organization to complement traditional care. Digital care platforms have been introduced, but there is limited evidence for their efficacy compared with traditional face-to-face treatment modalities.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Alex BrysonPhD Professor of Quantitative Social Science UCL Social Research Institute University College London London
Prof. Bryson
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The authors were concerned to know more about both the incidence of chronic pain and its implications for health, wellbeing and labour market prospects later in life. So we turned to a birth cohort study (The National Child Development Study) tracking all those born in Britain in a single week in 1958 through to age 62 to take a life-course approach.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Isaac M. Chiu PhD Associate Professor, Department of Immunology Harvard Medical School Boston, MA 02115
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The gut is densely innervated by pain fibers and we know that pain is associated with gut-related diseases. However, it is not so clear how pain fibers talk to the gut lining and barrier. We were interested to see that pain fibers were very close by the epithelial cells that line the gut, and in particular the goblet cells that produce mucus. We were wondering if mucus could be regulated by pain. Mucus is a key protective barrier that keeps our gut healthy by keeping harmful substances as well as bacteria away from the gut wall.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Marian Wilson, PhD, MPH, RN, PMGT-BC Associate Professor Assistant Editor, Pain Management Nursing Washington State University College of Nursing
Dr. Wilson
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: People with opioid use disorder often experience withdrawal symptoms that can interfere with recovery success. Our team was interested in whether noninvasive home sensors could provide accurate information to detect overnight restlessness and sleep problems that could indicate opioid withdrawal for adults prescribed methadone for opioid use disorder.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Maxwell C. K. Leung, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Systems Biology and Toxicology New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Arizona State University, West Campus
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Over 200 million Americans currently have legal access to medical cannabis, recreational cannabis, or both. Yet, cannabis remains an illicit Schedule 1 substance at the federal level. This limits the efforts of several federal agencies to regulate harmful contaminants – including pesticides, heavy metals, solvents, microbes, and fungal toxins – in cannabis.
PainRelief.com Interview with: Beth Wallace, M.D. M.Sc Associate Investigator, Center for Clinical Management Research Staff Physician, Rheumatology VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System Assistant Professor, Division of Rheumatology University of Michigan
Dr. Wallace
PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Arthritis and joint pain are common among older adults. We used data from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging to understand how a national sample of older adults experiences and manages joint pain.
PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?
Response: Seventy percent of adults aged 50-80 report that they have joint pain. Three in five have a diagnosis of arthritis, including 30% who have a diagnosis of osteoarthritis (also called “wear and tear” or “bone on bone” arthritis).
Of those with joint pain, half said that it limited their usual activities, but about three in four said that they saw arthritis and joint pain as a normal part of aging that they could manage on their own.
More than half of all adults use over-the-counter pain relievers like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (Advil, Motrin, Aleve) for joint pain. One in ten used a prescription oral steroid, like prednisone. This is important because these medications can cause or worsen health conditions common in older people, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. More than a quarter of adults who used oral steroids for joint pain did not remember discussing the risks of these medications with their health care provider.
Ninety percent of those with joint pain used non-medication treatments, like exercise, massage, and splints and braces, to manage their symptoms. Most people who used these treatments found them to be very helpful.
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