American Pain Society's 26th Annual Meeting, May 2-5, 2007

26th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society

Some 1,500 attendees, including physicians, nurses, psychologists, physical and occupational therapists, and others interested in pain management, met May 2-5 in Washington, D.C., for the 26th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society.

"It was one of our largest [meetings] ever," said society president Judith Paice, R.N., Ph.D., a research professor of medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Among the highlights Paice cited was a plenary session by Joyce DeLeo, Ph.D., demonstrating the essential role glia play in pain transmission. "She gave a brilliant presentation," Paice said, "taking extraordinarily complex basic science findings and translating them for the entire group."

Paice also highlighted a session, moderated by the conference's Scientific Program Chair, Mary Ersek, Ph.D., R.N., on the assessment and treatment of pain in patients with advanced dementia, which Paice called "a hot topic."

With an aging baby boomer population and an incidence of dementia greater than 50 percent by the age of 85, "we are facing the challenge of treating pain in people who cannot tell us through traditional methods," said Paice. In fact, she noted that this has been designated the "Year of Pain in the Older Adult" by the society's parent organization, the International Association for the Study of Pain.

One "excellent symposium" was on treatment of soldiers injured in Iraq or other combat settings, according to David Clark, M.D., director of pain management at the Palo Alto Veterans' Administration Hospital and associate professor of anesthesiology at Stanford University.

Session organizer Michael Clark, Ph.D., "took the audience through battlefield issues and what they are doing to lessen immediate pain around an injury," David Clark said, including the use of nerve blocks and other pain-relieving techniques in the field and at forward surgical units, as well as details about the kinds of pain commonly found in injured veterans. "The amount of orthopedic pain was very high," said Clark, "as were conditions like headache from traumatic brain injury."

In fact, he said, the prevalence of headache among returning veterans with traumatic brain injury is so high -- 50 percent or more -- "that we would probably want to have available specific consultants to deal with headache, and that's not necessarily something we would have known."

Jeff Mogil, Ph.D., of McGill University, presented data on rats that can share their experience of pain and thus affect other animals' responses. "This is a guy who does rat research who has incredibly fascinating things to say about how rats basically communicate with one another about pain," said Ersek, who also is director of research at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.

Later in the conference, three psychologists -- Francis Keefe, Ph.D., Kenneth Craig, Ph.D. and Michael Sullivan, Ph.D. -- presented data complementary to Mogil's about how humans communicate pain, providing a case in point for one of the ideas emphasized at the meeting -- the importance of translational research.

"APS was a great meeting to show how to take data from bench to bedside, and that is a perfect example," said Ersek. "One of the highlights is we actually got to see those kinds of connections."

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TUESDAY, May 8 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with chronic pain after whiplash may benefit from surgical removal of painful trigger points in neck muscle, according to a study presented at the 26th annual meeting of the American Pain Society in Washington, D.C.

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MONDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer patients who listen to soothing music feel less pain than do their counterparts who do not listen to music, according to study findings presented at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society in Washington, D.C.

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MONDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- Once-daily extended-release morphine may improve physical function in patients with moderate to severe chronic low back pain better than oxycodone, according to the results of a randomized, industry-funded study presented at the 26th annual meeting of the American Pain Society in Washington, D.C.

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