When Patients' Assessments of Treatment for Subjective Symptoms are At Odds with Authoritative Assessments in the Biomedical Literature: The Case of Patients Treated with Acupuncture for Low Back Pain in a Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic in China (and Story of a Bewildered Chicken).

Assessments of treatments for 'subjective symptoms' are problematic and potentially contentious. These are symptoms without ascertainable pathophysiology, also referred to as 'medically unexplained.' Treatments of them may be assessed from different perspectives, and an assessment as seen from one perspective may be discrepant with an assessment as seen from another perspective.

What are the Origins of Chronic Back Pain of "Obscure Origins"? Turning Toward Family and Workplace Social Contexts.

Chronic back pain (CBP) is a common symptom throughout the world, and those undergoing it often experience a profound degradation of life. Despite extensive research, it remains an elusive symptom. In most cases, CBP is "non-specific," since bio-mechanisms examined in the clinic do not account for it; another way of saying this is that it is "of obscure origins.

Heat or Cold: Which One Exerts Greater Deleterious Effects on Health in a Basin Climate City? Impact of Ambient Temperature on Mortality in Chengdu, China.

: Although studies from many countries have estimated the impact of ambient temperature on mortality, few have compared the relative impacts of heat and cold on health, especially in basin climate cities. We aimed to quantify the impact of ambient temperature on mortality, and to compare the contributions of heat and cold in a large basin climate city, i.e.

The Constellation of Chronic Low Back Pain and Other Subjective Symptoms: Does the View Differ From China?

Study Design: This was a pilot, cross-sectional study. Its site was West China Hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

Objective: An objective was to explore whether, in China, chronic low back pain (cLBP) characteristically is one symptom among co-occurring subjective symptoms.

Potential advantages of an additional forearm rubber tourniquet in intravenous regional anesthesia: a randomized clinical trial.

Objective: Although the usefulness of an additional forearm tourniquet to conventional intravenous regional anesthesia (IVRA) has been reported, the forearm cuff may disturb the surgical field to some degree, especially in wrist surgery. In the present study, we assessed the clinical efficacy of a temporary additional forearm rubber tourniquet to the conventional upper arm tourniquet on the quality of IVRA.

Methods: The study included 32 ASA physical status I and II adult patients undergoing elective hand surgery who were randomly allocated to either an additional forearm tourniquet group (Group F) or to a conventional upper arm tourniquet group (Group C).

Do outcomes of acupuncture for back pain differ according to varying sociocultural contexts? The view from China.

Objectives: What are the outcomes of acupuncture for back pain? According to well-regarded trials, acupuncture is little better for back pain than biomedicine, and active acupuncture is no better than sham acupuncture. These trials occurred in the West. Patients are inside the clinic a miniscule amount of time in relation to the time they are outside the clinic and enmeshed in the wider sociocultural context.

West China hospital set of measures in Chinese to evaluate back pain treatment.

Objective: Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world, and back pain is as prevalent in China as it is elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of measures in Chinese to evaluate back pain treatment. We assemble a set of Chinese measures to evaluate outcomes in diverse domains.

Opioid pharmacotherapy for chronic non-cancer pain in the United States: a research guideline for developing an evidence-base.

Unlabelled: This document reports the consensus of an interdisciplinary panel of research and clinical experts charged with reviewing the use of opioids for chronic noncancer pain (CNCP) and formulating guidelines for future research. Prescribing opioids for chronic noncancer pain has recently escalated in the United States. Contrasting with increasing opioid use are: 1) The lack of evidence supporting long-term effectiveness; 2) Escalating misuse of prescription opioids including abuse and diversion; and 3) Uncertainty about the incidence and clinical salience of multiple, poorly characterized adverse drug events (ADEs) including endocrine dysfunction, immunosuppression and infectious disease, opioid-induced hyperalgesia and xerostomia, overdose, falls and fractures, and psychosocial complications.

[Validating the Oswestry Disability Index in patients with low back pain in Sichuan].

Objective: To test the reliability and validity of the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) in patients with low back pain in China.

Methods: Eighty six patients (female 51, male 35, average age 39.5 +/- 10.

Speech motor control and chronic back pain: a preliminary investigation.

Objectives: Chronic back pain and its sequelae can influence cognitive, affective, and neuromuscular functioning. Speech production--a complex sensorimotor activity--integrates shared cognitive, neuromuscular, and musculoskeletal resources, and therefore could be altered by chronic pain. The purpose of this preliminary investigation was twofold: 1) to determine whether speech alternating motion rates (i.

Opioid therapy for nonspecific low back pain and the outcome of chronic work loss.

Outcomes of opioid therapy for noncancer pain remain to be more fully explored. Loss of work is among these outcomes. Especially when work loss becomes "chronic" (persists >or=90 days), it has profound psycho-social repercussions that compound suffering of those already in pain.

[Survey of factors of the patient with lumbago seeking for acupuncture treatment and observation on the therapeutic effect of acupuncture at early days].

Objective: To explore factors of the patient with lumbago seeking for acupuncture treatment and to observe the therapeutic effect of acupuncture at early days.

Methods: The factors of the patient with lumbago seeking for acupuncture treatment were investigated by questionnaire in 45 cases of lumbago. The patients enrolled were treated by acupuncture and moxibustion for 1-2 sessions with Shenshu (BL 23), Dachangshu (BL 25), Mingmen (GV 4), Yaoyangguan (GV 3) selected.

A consensus approach toward the standardization of back pain definitions for use in prevalence studies.

Study Design: A modified Delphi study conducted with 28 experts in back pain research from 12 countries.

Objective: To identify standardized definitions of low back pain that could be consistently used by investigators in prevalence studies to provide comparable data.

Summary Of Background Data: Differences in the definition of back pain prevalence in population studies lead to heterogeneity in study findings, and limitations or impossibilities in comparing or summarizing prevalence figures from different studies.

Coping and back problems: analysis of multiple data sources on an entire cross-sectional cohort of Swedish military recruits.

Background: As the literature now stands, a bewildering number and variety of biological, psychological and social factors are, apparently, implicated in back problems. However, if and how these have a direct influence on back problems is not clear. Obesity, for example, has in many studies been shown to be associated with back problems but there is no evidence for a causal link.

Back pain claim rates in Japan and the United States: framing the puzzle.

Study Design: This is a cross-national comparison of workers' compensation claims for back pain in Japan and the United States (US).

Objectives: The main objective is to juxtapose rates of back pain claims in Japan and Washington state. Because the Washington state rate closely matches rates for other US states as well as the rate for the US as a whole, it is used to represent the US rate.

When back pain becomes disabling: a regional analysis.

Back pain is a common condition and in most cases is not disabling. We have investigated disabling back pain that leads to health care utilization, time lost from work, and high costs. Disabling back pain remains of obscure origin because the focus in studying it has been too narrow.