Pain Management - Oncology News Article | Onabotulinumtoxina for treatment of focal cancer pain after surgery and/or radiation |4134185

Pain Management - Oncology News Article | Onabotulinumtoxina for treatment of focal cancer pain after surgery and/or radiation |4134185

Excerpt:
Pain Medicine, 07/17/2012 Clinical Article

Mittal S et al. – Local treatment with onabotulinumtoxinA can significantly reduce pain and improve quality of life in cancer patients suffering from pain in the area of surgery and radiation and was well tolerated in cancer patients.


Methods

Authors studied the effect of onabotulinumtoxinA in seven cancer patients who suffered from severe focal pain (visual analog scale >5) at the site of local surgery or radiotherapy or both.

OnabotulinumtoxinA (20–100 units) was injected into the focal pain areas (skin or muscle or both).

Five of seven patients were followed beyond 1 year (1.5–5 years) with repeat treatment.


Results

All seven patients reported a significant improvement in pain (mean drop in visual analog scale score of 5.1).

They described their response on the patient global assessment as satisfactory (two patients) or very satisfactory (five patients).

Six of seven patients found the pain relief associated with significant improvement in quality of life.

One patient developed weakness of jaw muscles after bilateral masseter injection that was not observed during second injection (reduced dose).

Improvements with treatment persisted with repeat injections during long–term follow–up (five patients). "

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BBC News - US teen invents advanced cancer test using Google

TEDatNewYork_0726_IMG_2149_1920 (Photo credit: TED Conference)

BBC News - US teen invents advanced cancer test using Google:

Excerpt:

"Fifteen-year-old high school student Jack Andraka likes to kayak and watch the US television show Glee.

And when time permits, he also likes to do advanced research in one of the most respected cancer laboratories in the world.

Jack Andraka has created a pancreatic cancer test that is 168 times faster and considerably cheaper than the gold standard in the field. He has applied for a patent for his test and is now carrying out further research at Johns Hopkins University in the US city of Baltimore.

And he did it by using Google.

The Maryland native, who won $75,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in May for his creation, cites search engines and free online science papers as the tools that allowed him to create the test."

'via Blog this'

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• VIDEO: Teen invents cancer test using web
• 5 teenage cancer innovators

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Hockey, Cancer, and the Chaos of Desperation

Leo Tolstoy 1848 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Ross Bonander

Excerpt:

"Cancer. Cancer is the Word.


In 1886 Leo Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich was published. To make a short story even shorter, Ivan is a carefree guy until he gets sick. Nobody can or will say what illness he has, but it's clear he's dying. Of the many interpretations of the book's meaning, I find Susan Sontag's to be most compelling: that he has the one disease that has traditionally been such a scourge on humankind that saying the word itself in some cultures is taboo: Ivan has cancer.
Because of the inability or unwillingness of anyone to confront the disease, Ivan dies.
That was a fictional story from 1886.
Here's a real one from 11 August 2012: it is not uncommon for women in the Vietnamese community to die from untreated cancers because of the many taboo associations with the disease. [Loury, Erin. "In Vietnamese community, treating taboos on cancer." Los Angeles Times. ]"

Read full article here.

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Pain Medicine News - Is It Time To Change the Way We Report Pain?

Pain Medicine News - Is It Time To Change the Way We Report Pain?

Excerpt:

"A study by the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT) found that, in addition to the importance of assessing pain relief and improvement in physical and emotional functioning, a comprehensive outcome measure must also consider changes in “fatigue, sleep, home and family care, social and recreational activities, interpersonal relationships, and sexual activities.”13 In 2005, IMMPACT recommended several core outcome measures to be used in clinical trials14; however, few of these measures were designed specifically to evaluate the efficacy of pain management treatments, or were normed on a pain population (e.g., Beck Depression Inventory, Profile of Mood States, etc.). Casarett et al15 found that in addition to the reduction of pain, patients commonly cited improvement in sleep and increased ability to function as meaningful clinical end points. Moreover, Robinson et al16 found patients considered decreased fatigue, distress and interference as indicators of treatment success.
In response to these concerns, the global pain scale (GPS) was created. The GPS was designed to capture the multidimensionality of pain but also to provide a single score that could be used to track changes (e.g., as the result of a clinical intervention).17 Rooted in the biopsychosocial model, the GPS assesses physical pain, affective effects of pain, specific clinical outcomes, and the degree to which the pain interferes with ADLs.

We believe the GPS can be used as a standardized measure of treatment efficacy. It uniquely tracks clinical outcomes after a pain-relieving treatment has been initiated. The GPS can be administered to the patient in the waiting room and scored by the support staff, thus resulting in a robust assessment of pain in one numerical score that the physician can employ to formulate treatment plans. For research, the GPS can be used to measure pain scores and to follow pain treatment efficacy. The GPS is available free for physicians’ use in their practices or research studies, at http://www.paindoctor.com/​global-pain-scale .

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