Problems in Pain Clinics

Early inflammatory clinics. Experience with early arthritis/back pain clinics.

There is a clear need to assess patients presenting with a new onset of inflammatory peripheral arthritis and/or back pain early. Indeed, the clinical presentation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is not always characteristic but its early diagnosis is crucial to prevent irreversible structural damage. Likewise low back pain is common in the general population but may be related to ankylosing spond...

Psychological Strategies in Pain Management: Optimizing Procedures in Clinics

National survey of pain clinics in Croatia: Organization and services.

OBJECTIVE To analyze organization and therapeutic procedures administered in tertiary outpatient pain clinics in Croatia. METHODS Data about organization of pain clinics, its personnel, equipment, continuing medical education, therapeutic procedures, research activities and relations with pharmaceutical industry were collected using questionnaires. RESULTS Twenty-two Croatian pain clinics w...

The Prevalence of Pain in Patients Attending Sarcoma Outpatient Clinics

The prevalence of pain in patients with sarcoma is not well documented. We investigated this in outpatients at a tertiary cancer referral centre, assessing the adequacy of pain control and for risk factors leading to higher prevalence and severity of pain. 149 patients were surveyed. Patients with pain within the previous 7 days completed pain assessment tools (BPI, S-LANSS, PMI). 53% of patien...

Psychologically mediated abdominal pain in surgical and medical outpatients clinics.

Ninety-six patients complaining of recurrent or persistent abdominal pain were referred consecutively to a surgical clinic and a medical clinic, respectively. They were examined psychiatrically after their initial physical investigation. The psychiatric examination included rating scales for depression and anxiety, a personality inventory, life-events schedule, scale of verbal expressivity, and...