Pain management

How treatment is labelled affects migraine pain scores, study finds

Giving patients positive information about their treatment for acute migraine contributes to a successful outcome, whether the patient is given active drug or placebo, a US study has shown ( Science Translational Medicine ; 8 January 2013).…

Gabapentin plus nortriptyline cuts neuropathic pain

Neuropathic pain is relieved more effectively by combination treatment with the anticonvulsant gabapentin and the antidepressant nortriptyline than by treatment with either drug alone, a study published online in The Lancet has shown.…

Managing post-operative pain

In the eighth article of a series on peri-operative care, Mohamed H. Rahman and Jane Beattie focus on the physiology of pain and briefly describe the non-opioid and opioid analgesics used for post-operative pain relief…

Anaesthesia and surgical pain relief — the ideal general anaesthetic agent

The aim of this article is to describe the properties of the ideal anaesthetic agent, review how close today’s anaesthetic agents are to the ideal and look at the future for anaesthetic agents.…