Understanding the lived experience of chronic pain: A systematic review and synthesis of qualitative evidence syntheses.

Background: Although multiple measures of the causes and consequences of chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) are available and can inform pain management, no quantitative summary of these measures can describe the meaning of pain for a patient. The lived experience of pain tends to be a blind spot in pain management. This study aimed to: (1) integrate qualitative research investigating the lived experience of a range of CNCP conditions; (2) establish common qualitative themes in CNCP experience; and (3) evaluate the relevance of our results through a survey questionnaire based on these themes, administered across the United Kingdom.

A perspective on the role of language about pain.

This article contributes a perspective on pain motivated by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. According to Wittgenstein, the child learns from others that the occasions on which it manifests certain reactions-the reactions that human beings manifest when injured-make it appropriate to self-ascribe "pain". When the child can signal correctly that she is in the requisite bodily state, then she has a conception of pain.

Reconsidering the International Association for the Study of Pain definition of pain.

Introduction: The definition of pain promulgated by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) is widely accepted as a pragmatic characterisation of that human experience. Although the Notes that accompany it characterise pain as "always subjective," the IASP definition itself fails to sufficiently integrate phenomenological aspects of pain.

Methods: This essay reviews the historical development of the IASP definition, and the commentaries and suggested modifications to it over almost 40 years.

Effectiveness of initiating extrafine-particle versus fine-particle inhaled corticosteroids as asthma therapy in the Netherlands.

Background: Most randomised clinical trials typically exclude a significant proportion of asthma patients, including those at higher risk of adverse events, with comorbidities, obesity, poor inhaler technique and adherence, or smokers. However, these patients might differentially benefit from extrafine-particle inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). This matched cohort, database study, compared the effectiveness of extrafine-particle with fine-particle ICS in a real-life population initiating ICS therapy in the Netherlands.