Depression, age linked to post-prostatectomy pain
December 31st, 2008
Here are a few tricks to lose weight fast. Weight loss doesn’t have to be a slow and boring process. You don’t need to suffer either. Look, weight loss has a lot to do with your effort. This article takes 2 minutes to read, but I can assure you that I’m not asking much of
Full Post: Tricks to Lose Weight
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Younger age, symptoms of depression, and severe pain during the immediate post-operative period are significant predictors of severe pain during recovery from radical prostatectomy, study findings indicate.
These results imply that “pain once manifested is not easily converted despite a generous analgesic treatment,” Swedish investigators explain in the current issue of BMC Nursing. “This may be more evident in … younger and depressive patients, who might benefit from a more aggressive therapy instituted in the very early postoperative period.”
Dr. Kerstin Wickstrom Ene, at Sahlgrenska University in Gothenburg, and associates examined factors potentially associated with post-operative pain intensity using the visual analog scale (0-100 mm).
The men were an average of 63 years old, and ranged between 43 and 73 years old. A visual analog score of greater than 30 mm was interpreted as inadequate analgesia and severe pain was defined as a visual analog score greater than 70 mm.
All of the men underwent radical prostatectomy, removal of the prostate and the surrounding tissue.
Routine treatments for postoperative pain included continuous epidural analgesia (injection of analgesia into the epidural space of the spine causing loss of feeling in the abdomen and pelvic area) intrathecal analgesia (injection of analgesia directly into the spinal canal); or systemic opioid analgesia.
Patients were asked about pain at 4 hours after surgery and about the “worst pain” experienced during the last 24 hours at intervals of 24, 48, and 72 hours.
Among the 155 patients, 1 out off 4 experienced severe pain. The only demographic factor associated with severe pain was younger age.
Sixteen patients had symptoms of depression determined the day prior to surgery. Depression correlated with postoperative pain and predicted a pain level higher than 70 on the visual analog score. Anxiety level did not affect the pain experience.
Overall, intrathecal analgesia was most effective. Epidural analgesia was associated with higher pain levels on day 2, whereas patients treated with systemic drugs required more opiates.
Further analysis indicated that “the probability that the pain score would exceed 30 mm and 70 mm was predicted only by previous
visual analog value,” Ene and colleagues report. They recommend that “patients who wake up after surgery with insufficient pain relief should be treated immediately to avoid further pain.”
SOURCE: BMC, Nursing December 9, 2008.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Related Posts:
By Michelle Rizzo NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Whether brain surgery is likely to improve or worsen memory in a patient with epilepsy can be predicted before the operation is performed, according to findings in the journal Neurology. Brain surgery can be very effective for some patients whose seizures do not respond to antiepileptic drugs, “but it
Full Post: Benefits of epilepsy surgery predicted pre-op
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An elderly person who has fractured their femur - the large thigh bone that connects the leg to the hip - may want to have surgery sooner rather than later, according to a study linking longer times to surgery to a somewhat increased risk of post-surgery complications. Dr. Rudiger Smektala from
Full Post: Delayed surgery may affect fracture recovery
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older patients often suffer delirium after heart surgery, but this seems to be unrelated to pre-surgery anxiety and depression, according to a new study. “Delirium is a common psychiatric complication after cardiac surgery,” note Dr. Koen Milisen, of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and colleagues. “Special attention” must be paid to delirium after
Full Post: Anxiety does not up risk of post-surgery delirium: study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Will Boggs, MD NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An enlarged prostate due to benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH, can be safely and effectively removed using a type of minimally invasive single-keyhole surgery, researchers report. The procedure, known as single-port transvesical enucleation of the prostate, or STEP, is “indicated in patients with large (greater than 80 to
Full Post: Large prostates removed with single-keyhole surgery
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Surgery to remove the esophagus is not being used as often as it should be for some cases of early-stage cancer of the esophagus. That’s the conclusion of Dr. E. Carter Paulson and colleagues, from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who assessed the treatment of 2,386 patients
Full Post: Surgery underused for esophagus cancer: study
Posted in Health News