Active clinical trials for "Chronic Pain"

TEst the effect of "Tailored Physical Activity" or "Chronic Pain Self-management Program" on Returning to Work in Sicklisted Citizens With Chronic Pain Related to the Spine or Upper Body

Prescription opioid misuse is a significant public health problem as well as a patient safety concern. Primary care providers are the leading prescribers of opioids for chronic pain, yet few providers follow standard practice guidelines regarding assessment and monitoring. The investigators propose a novel system change in delivery of primary care services to decrease misuse of and addiction to prescription opioids for patients with chronic pain. The proposed intervention for the overall project includes a nurse-managed registry for planning individual patient care and conducting population-based care for a population of patients receiving opioids for chronic pain. Academic detailing to clinicians is another effective way to improve care. Finally, the researchers will create a knowledge management tool to facilitate guideline adherence. This tool will be accessible via an internet link, and will include validated instruments to assess patient status and also to facilitate physician adherence to suggested monitoring.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of electro-acupuncture in pain processing on patients with fibromyalgia (FM). The investigators hypothesize that electro-acupuncture is effective for FM because it functions as a desensitization therapy, which when applied repeatedly over multiple treatment sessions, gradually habituates the nervous system to continuing pain and sensory signaling.

California Poppy has been traditionally used in Herbal Medicine as an analgesic, mild sedative and/or sleep aid. However there are no human clinical trial data to support its use. Sleep disturbances are a well-recognized component of chronic pain, and lead to additional social withdrawal, greater pain and worsening depression. Most hypnotics available either place the patient at further risk (e.g. benzodiazepines combined with opioids increase the risk of central or obstructive sleep apnea), increase adverse events (dry mouth, daytime somnolence, etc.) or induce sleep but do not improve the quality of sleep (no increase in Rapid Eye Movement or curative sleep). This study intends to use California Poppy to avoid adverse effects while improving sleep. An open-label clinical trial was performed to obtain preliminary safety and efficacy information of California poppy. This trial was approved by a central ethics review board. The study results showed that California poppy, can be used as a co-analgesic to provide additional analgesia and/or sleep improvement to the patient. Patients who are referred to the clinic will be asked to complete a few short questionnaires at every visit and on monthly basis respectively. This data, in addition to the usual follow-up questionnaires used by the clinics' physicians (McGill Pain Intensity, Pain Disability Index, Short-form Health Survey-12v2) and general demographic and medical information will be used to assess California Poppy's effectiveness on patients

Participants will be selected from patients who have been scheduled at the site for treatment of chronic pain without sedation. They will receive either fentanyl sublingual spray or a matching placebo sublingual spray that delivers no medication. Participants may take pain killers at any time after the procedure for pain relief. They will be given a diary card, which they will take home. They will record the name of the medication taken, the time, and dosage. The study coordinator will call participants about 24 hours after the procedure to collect information from the diary card and follow up information about pain and side effects (adverse events) after they left the site.

The purpose of this study is to determine if the combination of thoracic paravertebral block and multimodal analgesia will decrease chronic pain and arm morbidity in patients undergoing breast cancer surgery with lymph node dissection as compared to patients receiving local anesthesia with multimodal analgesia.

The effect of intraoperative infiltration of the operation site with bupivacain on the development of chronic pain is the object of our trial. We hypothesize that the occurrence of chronic pain in the goup of patients receiving the infiltration will be 50% less than in the placebo group receiving normal saline. The study is a randomized controlled triple blinded trial with a sequential study design.

Chronic pain is a major health problem and it has been estimate to account for approximately 40% of all medical visits, costing more than $600 billion annually in the United States alone. Given that pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments for chronic pain are often difficult and may be associated with limiting side effects, technology-based interventions using virtual reality (VR) may be a promising alternative treatment option. Recent findings from cognitive neuroscience show that it is possible to manipulate the body schema and to induce a range of well-controlled illusory bodily experiences by exposing participants to conflicting multisensory bodily inputs using VR, that are associated with changes in pain perception and somatosensory processing in healthy subjects and chronic pain patients. In the current project the investigators plan to follow up on these findings in patients suffering from chronic pain affecting the whole body, e.g. fibromyalgia. The project is planned as a single center clinical study at the Department of Neurology and Psychosomatic Medicine, Inselspital Bern, in cooperation with the Pain Center Inselspital Bern, the Department of Biomedical Engineering; University Bern and the Department of Psychology, University of Bern. The investigators want to explore the analgesic effect of a specific multisensory illusion (e.g. the cardio-visual illusion) in patients suffering from chronic pain as compared to a control condition (single-blinded, randomized clinical trial) using psychometric and algometric methods. Moreover, the investigators would like to assess the physiological changes associated with pain reduction, study the reduction of psychological distress and improved well-being and assess the subjective acceptance of VR as a possible treatment option for patients with chronic pain. Importantly, the investigators plan to develop and test an easy to use, mobile VR setup as a long-term treatment option for patients with chronic pain. Given that chronic pain is a major health problem, the investigators believe that there is a huge market potential for an easy to use, noninvasive and effective treatment option and a possible technology transfer.

Study of the effect of gabapentin used as a preemptive to the emergence and development chronic neuropathic pain in patients after spinal cord trauma

This study aims to examine the effects of smartphone-based Attention-Bias Modification Training (ABMT) in chronic pain participants.