InfoMIN: Chronic Pain Resources

Chronic Pain Management

  PainACTION.com is a website that shows you how to manage chronic pain, step-by-step; how to learn what works for you; how to accomplish your goals; how to get the most from your medical care; and how to achieve the quality of life you deserve. This comprehensive site can help patients take an active role in managing their pain.
     As a registered user you can customize MyPage and have access to recommended lessons, articles and tools that match your pain profile. If you choose to register (it's free!), you'll be able to access such personalized features as tools for coping with pain, "self-check" questions that help you learn about yourself, tips on managing pain from people just like you, and daily trackers.
     The painACTION program was developed in consultation with a panel of nationally recognized experts in the pain management field. It is designed to reinforce the importance of self-management for people with chronic pain, and to empower them with evidence-based strategies for self-managing pain. The painACTION site "learns" from your input and provides information tailored to your specific needs. It offers 24/7 access to information and tools designed to help you monitor and track your pain more accurately.

2-18-2010

Neurotoxicity of Opioids: Are We Responding?. by Jose Pereira, M.D. With the increased utilization of opioid analgesics, has come an increased detection of "newer" adverse effects.

Nonmalignant Chronic Pain: Taking the Time to Treat from American Family Physician, May 1, 2009.

Chronic Pain: 1. A New Disease? by DANIEL BROOKOFF, University of Tennessee. "Chronic pain continues to be perceived as a characterologic disorder rather than a serious, potentially fatal, medical disease. The general lack of understanding of how persistent pain becomes magnified and ingrained prevents many patients from receiving the level of care that they need to regain control of their lives and resume normal activities."

Chronic Pain: 2. The Case for Opioids. by DANIEL BROOKOFF, University of Tennessee. "Opioid medications allow us to treat chronic pain as aggressively as we would any pathogen, but we must first overcome ingrained misconceptions about patients' motivations for seeking treatment and about the addictive properties of the drugs. With controlled use, the newer sustained-release formulations give real hope for safe and sustained pain relief."

Update: cancer pain management. by Eric W. Anderson, M.D. Focuses on four areas of controversy and research: patients’ expectations about pain management, the use of newer opioid formulations, methadone hydrochloride’s reemergence as an analgesic, and palliative care for the patient who is actively dying.

Those Nasty Opioid Conversions: How To Do Them. Basic Procedure to convert from "old" to "new" opioid regimen.

Neuropathic Pain: New Insights, New Interventions Part 2. by Gary J. Bennett, Professor of Neurology and Director of Pain Research, Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, Philadelphia. "The past decade has seen great progress in understanding its causes and in finding new drugs that promise great benefit. An early outcome of the research has been the observation that the new drugs do not blunt normal pain sensation--a pattern beginning to find explanation through the realization that neural pain circuits rewire themselves, both anatomically and biochemically, after nerve injury."