July 1, 2009
By GARDINER HARRIS
New York Times
ADELPHI, Md. — A federal advisory panel voted narrowly on Tuesday to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers in the world, because of their effects on the liver.
The two drugs combine a narcotic with acetaminophen, the ingredient found in popular over-the-counter products like Tylenol and Excedrin. High doses of acetaminophen are a leading cause of liver damage, and the panel noted that patients who take Percocet and Vicodin for long periods often need higher and higher doses to achieve the same effect.
Acetaminophen is combined with different narcotics in at least seven other prescription drugs, and all of these combination pills will be banned if the Food and Drug Administration heeds the advice of its experts. Vicodin and its generic equivalents alone are prescribed more than 100 million times a year in the United States. More...
PainCareMD
Friday, July 10, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Long-lasting Nerve Block Could Change Pain Management
April 14th, 2009 in Medicine & Health / Research
(PhysOrg.com) -- Harvard researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have developed a slow-release anesthetic drug-delivery system that could potentially revolutionize treatment of pain during and after surgery, and may also have a large impact on chronic pain management.
In work funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they used specially designed fat-based particles called liposomes to package saxitoxin, a potent anesthetic, and produced long-lasting local anesthesia in rats without apparent toxicity to nerve or muscle cells.
The research will be published online during the week of April 13-17 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The idea was to have a single injection that could produce a nerve block lasting days, weeks, maybe even months,” explains Daniel Kohane of the Division of Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology at Children’s, the report’s senior author, and associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. “It would be useful for conditions like chronic pain where, rather than use narcotics, which are systemic and pose a risk of addiction, you could just put that piece of the body to sleep, so to speak.”
Previous attempts to develop slow-release anesthetics have not been successful because of the tendency for conventional anesthetics to cause toxicity to surrounding tissue. Indeed, drug-packaging materials have themselves been shown to cause tissue damage. Now, Kohane and colleagues report that if saxitoxin is packaged within liposomes, it is able to block nerve transmission of pain without causing significant nerve or muscle damage. More...
PainCareMD
(PhysOrg.com) -- Harvard researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have developed a slow-release anesthetic drug-delivery system that could potentially revolutionize treatment of pain during and after surgery, and may also have a large impact on chronic pain management.
In work funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they used specially designed fat-based particles called liposomes to package saxitoxin, a potent anesthetic, and produced long-lasting local anesthesia in rats without apparent toxicity to nerve or muscle cells.
The research will be published online during the week of April 13-17 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The idea was to have a single injection that could produce a nerve block lasting days, weeks, maybe even months,” explains Daniel Kohane of the Division of Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology at Children’s, the report’s senior author, and associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. “It would be useful for conditions like chronic pain where, rather than use narcotics, which are systemic and pose a risk of addiction, you could just put that piece of the body to sleep, so to speak.”
Previous attempts to develop slow-release anesthetics have not been successful because of the tendency for conventional anesthetics to cause toxicity to surrounding tissue. Indeed, drug-packaging materials have themselves been shown to cause tissue damage. Now, Kohane and colleagues report that if saxitoxin is packaged within liposomes, it is able to block nerve transmission of pain without causing significant nerve or muscle damage. More...
PainCareMD
New “Bedside Test” Expected to Simplify and Improve Back Pain Diagnosis
April 13, 2009
By Jennifer Anderson
Researchers have devised a simple “bedside” test to distinguish between pain from nerve damage and other causes of pain. The test could lead to more accurate diagnosis and treatment for a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) that plagues many workplaces – back pain. It is the most commonly cited reason for being absent from work.
The ability to determine the underlying nature of the pain more accurately is essential to choosing the best treatment, according to the researchers. It also points the way to more targeted management of the condition: just as workspaces and tasks can be modified ergonomically to help prevent certain MSDs, they can be modified to help prevent the aggravation of existing conditions. More...
PainCareMD
By Jennifer Anderson
Researchers have devised a simple “bedside” test to distinguish between pain from nerve damage and other causes of pain. The test could lead to more accurate diagnosis and treatment for a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) that plagues many workplaces – back pain. It is the most commonly cited reason for being absent from work.
The ability to determine the underlying nature of the pain more accurately is essential to choosing the best treatment, according to the researchers. It also points the way to more targeted management of the condition: just as workspaces and tasks can be modified ergonomically to help prevent certain MSDs, they can be modified to help prevent the aggravation of existing conditions. More...
PainCareMD
Advice For Novice Runners Who Want To Avoid Injury
Apr. 12 2009
Angela Mulholland, CTV.ca News Staff
When the weather finally warms, spring is a time when many people think of dusting off their sneakers and taking up running.
And why not? Running is pretty simple. Not much to master, really; just put one foot in front of the other and you're off and running.
But while springtime is a great time to hit your fitness stride, it's also a time when many winter couch potatoes-turned-wannabe marathoners get hurt -- or just plain sore. Just ask Toronto-based sports medicine physician Dr. Grant Lum. He's seen hundreds of running injuries at his clinic, Athletic Edge Sports Medicine.
"We see a lot of sprains and strains in the areas of their bodies that are not ready for the rigourous activity that they're plunging into," he tells CTV.ca. "So that is usually knee pain, back pain and foot pain. Those are probably the three most common injuries."
The classic mistake novice runners make is trying to run too far, too hard or too often, in too short a period of time. More...
PainCare
Angela Mulholland, CTV.ca News Staff
When the weather finally warms, spring is a time when many people think of dusting off their sneakers and taking up running.
And why not? Running is pretty simple. Not much to master, really; just put one foot in front of the other and you're off and running.
But while springtime is a great time to hit your fitness stride, it's also a time when many winter couch potatoes-turned-wannabe marathoners get hurt -- or just plain sore. Just ask Toronto-based sports medicine physician Dr. Grant Lum. He's seen hundreds of running injuries at his clinic, Athletic Edge Sports Medicine.
"We see a lot of sprains and strains in the areas of their bodies that are not ready for the rigourous activity that they're plunging into," he tells CTV.ca. "So that is usually knee pain, back pain and foot pain. Those are probably the three most common injuries."
The classic mistake novice runners make is trying to run too far, too hard or too often, in too short a period of time. More...
PainCare
Chair Disease
6 strategies
Julie Deardorff
Chicago Tribune
April 3, 2009
Where are you right now? Lounging on an overstuffed couch with the newspaper and a cup of coffee? Sitting on a kitchen chair taking in the news online? Well, I hope you're sitting down for this bit of news. (Or maybe you should stand.) Your chair is slowly killing you.
Chair disease, as we like to call it, is an increasingly common malady in the U.S. that is almost always caused by spending too much time parked on your rear end.
It's not really the chair's fault, though. The problem is that most of us sit wrong—slouched forward with our earlobes in front of our shoulders—and for hours without moving. The result? Avoidable chair-related ailments, including flabby butts, an increased risk of blood clots, and back pain, the leading cause of disability in Americans under age 45. And if you haven't had back pain yet, just wait; it affects 8 out of 10 people at some point during their life, according to the National Institutes of Health.
"Sitting all day is the worst thing in the world you can do for your back, " said Dr. Joel Press, the medical director of the Spine & Sports Institute at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Sitting puts nearly twice the stress on the spine as standing; slouching while you sit increases the pressure even more.
That's because hunching forward pushes the back into a convex or C shape. Try it. Now pull your shoulders back and together and put your hand on your lower back. That natural concave curve is what you want; slouching fatigues and overstretches the ligaments, causing back pain.
To make matters worse, we stay in this bad C position for hours, barely moving, even when nature calls. "I'll be crashing on a project and three hours go by," said Kara Carmichael, a 23-year-old Chicago publicist with back pain who sits behind her computer for 10 hours a day.
Movement is key because the disks in our vertebrae are important shock absorbers. When we're locked in one position, we're starving the disks of nutrients. More...
PainCareMD
Julie Deardorff
Chicago Tribune
April 3, 2009
Where are you right now? Lounging on an overstuffed couch with the newspaper and a cup of coffee? Sitting on a kitchen chair taking in the news online? Well, I hope you're sitting down for this bit of news. (Or maybe you should stand.) Your chair is slowly killing you.
Chair disease, as we like to call it, is an increasingly common malady in the U.S. that is almost always caused by spending too much time parked on your rear end.
It's not really the chair's fault, though. The problem is that most of us sit wrong—slouched forward with our earlobes in front of our shoulders—and for hours without moving. The result? Avoidable chair-related ailments, including flabby butts, an increased risk of blood clots, and back pain, the leading cause of disability in Americans under age 45. And if you haven't had back pain yet, just wait; it affects 8 out of 10 people at some point during their life, according to the National Institutes of Health.
"Sitting all day is the worst thing in the world you can do for your back, " said Dr. Joel Press, the medical director of the Spine & Sports Institute at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Sitting puts nearly twice the stress on the spine as standing; slouching while you sit increases the pressure even more.
That's because hunching forward pushes the back into a convex or C shape. Try it. Now pull your shoulders back and together and put your hand on your lower back. That natural concave curve is what you want; slouching fatigues and overstretches the ligaments, causing back pain.
To make matters worse, we stay in this bad C position for hours, barely moving, even when nature calls. "I'll be crashing on a project and three hours go by," said Kara Carmichael, a 23-year-old Chicago publicist with back pain who sits behind her computer for 10 hours a day.
Movement is key because the disks in our vertebrae are important shock absorbers. When we're locked in one position, we're starving the disks of nutrients. More...
PainCareMD
Oxycodone Effective for Herpes Zoster Pain Relief
Randomized trial finds drug superior to gabapentin and placebo in relieving pain
Apr 1, 2009
WEDNESDAY, April 1 (HealthDay News) -- In patients with herpes zoster, controlled-release oxycodone effectively relieves pain and is generally well-tolerated, according to a study published in the April issue of Pain.
Robert H. Dworkin, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, N.Y., and colleagues randomly assigned 87 patients to receive seven days of treatment with famciclovir in combination with 28 days of treatment with either controlled-release oxycodone, gabapentin or placebo.
The researchers found that controlled-released oxycodone significantly reduced the mean worst pain during days 1 to 14 and that gabapentin was not significantly more effective than placebo. Although they found that controlled-release oxycodone was generally safe, significantly more oxycodone patients than placebo patients discontinued treatment (27.6 percent versus 6.9 percent), primarily because of constipation. More...
PainCare
Apr 1, 2009
WEDNESDAY, April 1 (HealthDay News) -- In patients with herpes zoster, controlled-release oxycodone effectively relieves pain and is generally well-tolerated, according to a study published in the April issue of Pain.
Robert H. Dworkin, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, N.Y., and colleagues randomly assigned 87 patients to receive seven days of treatment with famciclovir in combination with 28 days of treatment with either controlled-release oxycodone, gabapentin or placebo.
The researchers found that controlled-released oxycodone significantly reduced the mean worst pain during days 1 to 14 and that gabapentin was not significantly more effective than placebo. Although they found that controlled-release oxycodone was generally safe, significantly more oxycodone patients than placebo patients discontinued treatment (27.6 percent versus 6.9 percent), primarily because of constipation. More...
PainCare
When Spines Throw a Curve: Treating Adult Scoliosis
BY Katie Charles
New York Daily News
April 1st 2009
Dr. Sean E. McCance, co-director of spine surgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital, treats adult scoliosis in both men and women.
Related News
THE SPECIALIST: DR. SEAN MCCANCE ON ADULT DEGENERATIVE SCOLIOSIS
As co-director of orthopedic spine surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center, McCance diagnoses patients with spine disorders and spends much of his week in the operating room. In spine surgery for 13 years, McCance performs more than 250 operations annually.
WHO’S AT RISK:
Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine that can lead to impingement and back pain. It is very common, though in most cases the curves are small enough that they produce no symptoms and go undiagnosed. “Some studies have shown that as much as 5% of the population may have scoliosis, many of them with milder curves so they don’t even know, “ says McCance. Adult degenerative scoliosis usually affects people in their 40s or 50s who start developing a curvature of the spine because of disk degeneration. “Due to arthritis, the joints become loose or lax, and the spine starts to collapse, leading to curvature of the spine and compression of the nerves,” says McCance, “You can think of the spine as a column around a tube. If the column collapses, the nerves inside the tube get bent and compressed.”
Childhood scoliosis is more common in girls than in boys, but adult degenerative scoliosis affects both men and women. People with spinal problems in their family are at higher than usual risk. “Some people have a family history of spine problems and disk degenerations,” says McCance, “but we haven’t been able to firmly identify the genetic component.” More...
PainCareMD
New York Daily News
April 1st 2009
Dr. Sean E. McCance, co-director of spine surgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital, treats adult scoliosis in both men and women.
Related News
THE SPECIALIST: DR. SEAN MCCANCE ON ADULT DEGENERATIVE SCOLIOSIS
As co-director of orthopedic spine surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center, McCance diagnoses patients with spine disorders and spends much of his week in the operating room. In spine surgery for 13 years, McCance performs more than 250 operations annually.
WHO’S AT RISK:
Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine that can lead to impingement and back pain. It is very common, though in most cases the curves are small enough that they produce no symptoms and go undiagnosed. “Some studies have shown that as much as 5% of the population may have scoliosis, many of them with milder curves so they don’t even know, “ says McCance. Adult degenerative scoliosis usually affects people in their 40s or 50s who start developing a curvature of the spine because of disk degeneration. “Due to arthritis, the joints become loose or lax, and the spine starts to collapse, leading to curvature of the spine and compression of the nerves,” says McCance, “You can think of the spine as a column around a tube. If the column collapses, the nerves inside the tube get bent and compressed.”
Childhood scoliosis is more common in girls than in boys, but adult degenerative scoliosis affects both men and women. People with spinal problems in their family are at higher than usual risk. “Some people have a family history of spine problems and disk degenerations,” says McCance, “but we haven’t been able to firmly identify the genetic component.” More...
PainCareMD
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