Beyond the comfort zone: Victorian CNC Jill Woods describes the challenges of being an acute pain nurse.
'I always wanted to be a nurse from as far back as I can remember. For many years I enjoyed working as a perioperative nurse in a small Melbourne hospital where nurses were required to be multiskilled. This meant being able to scrub, scout or do anaesthetics...

Horizon Therapeutics Completes $21 Million in Equity Financing to Advance Pipeline of 'GI-Friendly' NSAIDs for Mild-to-Moderate Pain.
-- Phase 3 Trials to Begin in 2007 -- PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Horizon Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company, today announced that it raised an additional $15 million through a Series B financing to advance its lead product HZT-501, a "GI-friendly" prescription...

Don't withhold opioids from recovering addicts.
SAN DIEGO -- Pain patients with a history of substance abuse who are otherwise appropriate candidates for opioid medications should receive the same consideration from their physicians as patients without the disease of addiction, Dr. Howard A. Heit said the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine....

A painful circus.
In November 2000, a mental health patient assaulted a 35-year-old California social worker. This is her story of descent into chronic pain hell and her recovery, if not to heaven, then at least to purgatory. This real ease, disguised here using the pseudonym Jane Doe, was related to me...

DURECT and Nycomed Sign $202 Million Agreement to Develop and Commercialize POSIDUR(TM) in Europe and Other Select Countries.
CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DURECT Corporation announced today the signing of a collaboration agreement with Nycomed, a privately held European pharmaceutical company headquartered in Denmark, whereby the companies will jointly develop DURECT's POSIDUR(TM) post-operative pain relief depot. Nycomed will have exclusive commercialization rights in Europe and other...

DURECT Starts Phase II Dosing for TRANSDUR(TM)-Bupivacaine (DUR-843).
CUPERTINO, Calif., Jan. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DURECT Corporation today announced that we have started Phase II dosing in the U.S. under an FDA-accepted Investigational New Drug (IND) application for TRANSDUR(TM)-Bupivacaine (DUR-843), a transdermal pain patch for patients suffering from Post-Herpetic Neuralgia (post-shingles pain or PHN). DURECT's Phase I trial...

DURECT Corporation Announces Positive Phase I Study Results with New Product in Development.
CUPERTINO, Calif., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DURECT Corporation announced today that it has successfully completed Phase I clinical trials with a new product, DUR-843, which is intended to treat a persistent pain condition. We believe that the persistent pain market remains underserved and that DUR-843 has the potential to...

Recurrent pediatric headaches: behavioral concepts and interventions.
Abstract Recurrent pediatric headaches are increasingly understood to be a function of both respondent and operant processes. In particular, the environment is thought to elicit internal autonomic instability and to evoke external maladaptive pain behavior. While medical interventions often provide an appropriate first line treatment, behavioral interventions...

Oral treatment of chronic peripheral diabetic neuropathy.
Peripheral diabetic neuropathy is believed to affect at least 20% of all adults with type 1 or 2 diabetes mellitus. Optimal glucose control is the key to preventing or delaying its onset. Once neuropathy occurs, establishing good metabolic control and avoiding large fluctuations in glucose levels may help reduce...

Use of dexmedetomidine versus general anesthesia for endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms.
While abdominal aortic aneurysms have traditionally been treated with a major open surgical procedure, minimally invasive endovascular techniques are much less traumatic, with significantly less strain on the heart and vital organs. A sedation technique using dexmedetomidine, an alpha 2-adrenoreceptor agonist, was developed for this procedure. We retrospectively reviewed...