A book for midwives who would like to explore how best to help women cope with pain and fear. This book contains information about the physiological and psychological functions of pain; cultural influences on the experience of labour pain; elective caesareans, which are supposedly a simpler alternative; advantages and drawbacks of using pharmacological pain relief; information and ideas on how to transform labour pain into an experience of strength and power. While the book provides information on a very wide range of pain relief options and the emphasis is on maternal choice, it also presents many convincing arguments for normal physiological birth. It can therefore make a contribution to helping reduce the rate of unnecessary caesareans and help midwives improve rates of maternal satisfaction. Forewords by Dr Trudy Stevens and Dr Helene Vadeboncoeur.

In "The Pain Chronicles"," " Melanie Thernstrom traces conceptions of pain throughout the ages--from ancient Babylonian pain-banishing spells to modern brain imaging--to reveal the elusive, mysterious nature of pain itself. Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain, incisive reportage from leading pain clinics and medical research, and insights from a wide range of disciplines, Thernstrom shows that when dealing with pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear.

As image-guided spine interventions have increasingly become a primary strategy for managing back pain, the tools and capabilities available to practitioners have grown significantly. This fully revised edition of Image-Guided Spine Interventions presents the latest procedures available to physicians who perform minimally invasive spine interventions. The comprehensive text covers the fundamentals -- such as spine anatomy, procedural materials, and pharmacological requirements -- along with chapters devoted to key topics such as discography, percutaneous descectomy, vertebroplasty and balloon kyphoplasty, epidural steroid injections, and autonomic nerve blocks. Additionally, three new chapters are included in the Second Edition, covering pulsed radiofrequency procedures, sacroplasty, and spinal cord stimulation. Each technique is presented in a straightforward manner that allows the reader to effectively evaluate and implement new procedures. The text is further enhanced by nearly 200 images and illustrations. Edited by Dr. John Mathis, a former president of the American Society of Spine Radiology, and Dr. Stanley Golovac, who both have clinical practices devoted solely to spine procedures and pain management, the book will be useful to all physicians dealing with back pain, including radiologists, pain anesthesiologists, spine neurosurgeons, and orthopedists. Physicians will once again find that Image-Guided Spine Interventions, 2nd Edition, is the pivotal authority on image-guided techniques for the spine.

In this impassioned and hopeful book, David Biro reveals how to break through the silent wall of suffering physical and psychological that all too often accompanies pain and illness. Drawing together compelling stories from patients and insights from some of our greatest thinkers, writers, and artists, Listening to Pain eloquently demonstrates how lan- guage can alleviate the loneliness of pain, paving the way for empathy and effective treatment. Originally published in hardcover under the title The Language of Pain."

THREE OUT OF FIVE ADULTS WILL EXPERIENCE SIGNIFICANT BACK PAIN AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIVES, MAKING BACK PAIN AMERICA'S NUMBER ONE AILMENT
NOW IN ITS THIRD EDITION, the classic back pain manual "Your Aching Back "has been revised and updated to ensure that you have the latest science to speed your recovery.
Drawing on new research as well as decades of clinical experience, leading specialists Dr. Augustus White and Dr. Preston Phillips give you everything you need to know to manage this frustrating condition. To help you hone in on the source of your pain, they give a short primer on the basics of back mechanics as well as a discussion of the wide array of possible causes.
Treatment is the primary focus of the book. Emphasizing evidence-based medicine, the authors give a full account of the risks and benefits associated with treatments from acupuncture to spine surgery. You will find out when self-care makes sense, when you need to see a doctor, what questions to ask, and how to tell if you need a second opinion. Along the way, you'll learn about exciting advances in implant technology, recent studies on ergonomics, cutting-edge imaging technology, the newest forms of alternative care, and much more. And because dealing with chronic back pain can have an effect on every aspect of your life, this book offers sensible, empathic advice on everything from sex and sports to the financial and emotional consequences of long-term disability.
In its trademark conversational and unintimidating style, "Your Aching Back "places you back in control of your health and puts you on the path toward relief.

This book offers an in indictment of the nation's drug enforcement approach focusing on the short-sighted policies that often deny patients suffering from chronic pain the medications they need. Pain Control and Drug Policy: A Time for Change focuses on America's national crisis in pain management caused by the widening divergence between the enormous contributions of opioids ("narcotics") to pain management in the clinical setting and the mistaken belief that they are dangerous, highly addictive drugs. After dissecting the strategy and tactics of the War on Drugs from medical, historical, legal, socioeconomic, and geopolitical perspectives, Guy Faguet MD indicts the 40-year-long War on Drugs for having failed to stem the supply of illicit drugs in America despite expenditures of half a trillion dollars, despite violating the basic human right to pain relief of tens of millions of American chronic pain sufferers, and despite fomenting organized crime, government corruption, racial injustice, and social disruption in both the United States and the producer countries. He concludes with a clarion call for the abandonment of the War on Drugs, disbanding the Drug Enforcement Administration, and encouraging Congress to repeal the Controlled Substances Act. As a clinical and research oncologist responsible for the chronic pain management of thousands of cancer patients over the course of his 30-year career, Dr. Faguet knows that the most effective and safest way to manage most cases of chronic pain is with opioids. All modern pain-management textbooks advocate "titration to effect" in cases where opioids help: that is, gradually increasing the dosage until either the pain is acceptably controlled or the side effects begin to outweigh the pain-relief benefits. Yet the vast majority of doctors don't practice what the medical textbooks teach and instead prescribe opioids very reluctantly and conservatively. As a result, only half of all chronic pain sufferers-and fewer than half of all cancer patients-get adequate pain relief from their doctors. Why do physicians radically undertreat pain that is susceptible to opioid analgesics? They fear that if they prescribe Schedule II opioids in accordance with the professional standards of pain management set by such medical bodies as the American Pain Society, they will be investigated by the DEA, stigmatized, prosecuted as criminals, stripped of their licenses, and sent to jail. Visit Guy B. Faguet, MD's website here: www.faguet.net. Chronologies showing the events that led to Prohibition and its repeal, of drug use through the ages, and of the political history of drug policy in the United States and worldwide Six line graphs and eight tables conveying important information about pain relief as well as the War on Drugs Includes a thorough bibliography of works cited in the book

The prevalence of neck pain disorders is increasing world-wide with approximately 10% of adult affected with neck pain. The treatment of neck pain depends on its precise cause and includes rest, heat/ice application, traction, soft collar traction, physical therapy, transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation, surgical procedures and pharmacotherapy. The current pharmacological agents that are used in management of neck pain include non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, centrally acting analgesia, acetaminophen, muscle relaxants, topical painkillers and/or topical anaesthesia, local steroids and/or local anaesthetics injections and antimicrobials. This book focuses on the concepts of pharmacotherapy of neck pain disorders in respect to the cause of neck pain, the nature of pain, the mechanism of drug action, the practice of local injections with radiologist intervention, as well as the quality of life and the long term harmful effects including medicines abused.

If you suffer from chronic pain, whether as a result of an injury, illness, or accident, you know it can interfere with every aspect of your life. You may also know the medical treatments currently available are limited and, for many, ineffective. Current research has shown hypnosis to be an effective treatment for managing chronic pain, and almost all patients who learn self-hypnosis skills benefit from this approach. The hypnosis treatment found in this workbook has been scientifically tested and proven effective for reducing the intensity of chronic pain, including migraines, back pain, and tension headaches, among others. This workbook explains how to use these techniques to manage your chronic pain and take back control of your life and your health.
Used in combination with the program described in the corresponding therapist guide, this workbook teaches you self-hypnosis skills for lessening your pain, enhancing your sleep, and improving your mood. The first chapters will help you understand how hypnosis works by changing how your brain deals with information it receives from the body. The complete hypnosis treatment described in this book, alongside the treatment you receive from your clinician, will ultimately teach you skills for pain management that you can use at any time, and for the rest of your life.
"An excellent blueprint to understanding pain and the fundamentals of how hypnosis combined with CBT can offer pain amelioration. Perfect, even for uninitiated practitioners who wish to use empirically based scripts."--Jeffrey Zeig, Ph.D., The Milton Erickson Foundation
"Pain can too easily enslave people, holding them captive in many different ways. It is a liberating theme of empowerment that echoes throughout Dr. Jensen's work: he empowers clinicians to work more knowledgeably and skillfully with people who suffer painful conditions using his therapist guide, and he encourages the suffering individual to break free from pain's grip with the practical pain management skills taught in his workbook. Dr. Jensen's vision for the many ways hypnosis can help reduce the debilitating effects of painful conditions is fresh, inspiring and should be regularly integrated into every pain management program."--Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist and author of Trancework: An Introduction to the Practice of Clinical Hypnosis (Third Edition) and Treating Depression with Hypnosis

Being A Popular Scientific Account Of The Chemical History And Properties Of Alcohol, And Its Leading Effects Upon The Healthy Human Constitution.

""Power Through Pain" is a moving, inspiring memoir of Elizabeth Elster and her family's three and a half year struggle to find a solution to Elizabeth's intense daily pain. Eventually, after seeing twenty physicians, ingesting countless medications, and enduring many invasive medical procedures, the Elster family's search ends in success. Too often, individuals in chronic pain become isolated and embittered. This is a wonderful account of an individual's courage, determination and hope that will help other families struggling with rare chronic illnesses weave a path through a fragmented medical system that treats symptoms yet rarely heals." James W. Broatch, MSW, Executive Director, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association

Oxford Specialty Training is a specialty revision series for postgraduate trainees, taking into account the training structures and syllabuses newly introduced by the Modernising Medical Careers initiative. Training in Anaesthesia is a curriculum-based guide to the first phase of specialty training in anaesthetics; comprehensively covering the specific techniques, assessments and basic medical and physiological knowledge that trainees are required to learn as part of their basic training. These areas are currently examined by the Primary FRCA exam as part of a student's progress towards full fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, though the knowledge contained within the book continues to apply throughout all phases of training. The book is authored by both trainees and specialists, and has been comprehensively edited and peer-reviewed by both groups in order to create an authoritative yet accessible text, highlighted and augmented by many of the diagrams and key concepts that a trainee may be expected to reproduce during viva examinations. Novel drug tables convey essential information in a new and attractive form, and the majority of images have been created specifically for this book, avoiding the cliched figures and illustrations reproduced in training texts to date. The organisation of the material is unique, and the topic-based design ensures easy navigation and structured revision and learning.

A finalist in the National Indie Excellence 2008 book awards, this book was written for anyone who suffers from sexual dysfunction, depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia (or cares for someone who does). Medicines for Mental Health is the first book to provide detailed and readable information about all psychiatric medications, and other medical treatments, for these mental illnesses. Medicines cuts through jargon, demystifies mental illness, and explains how treatments work. It goes beyond current fads to cover important medications you need to know about, including many that will be new to your doctor.

"With Lous Heshusius as a guide, pain patients can learn much about the perils of a modern health-care odyssey. Health professionals can learn how an articulate middle-class female white patient thinks (with all that thinking entails) when her world is irreversibly altered by pain. She does not promise happy endings. Chronic pain is like that. From the rare intersection in this text between patient narrative and physician response, however, readers may construct a dialogue on pain in our time that cannot fail to bring plentiful opportunities for personal insight and professional enlightenment." from the Foreword by David B. Morris

Chronic pain, which affects 70 million people in the United States alone more than diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined is a major public health issue that remains poorly understood both within the health care system and by those closest to the people it afflicts. This book examines the experience of pain in ways that could significantly improve how patients and practitioners deal with pain. It is the first volume of a new collection of titles within the acclaimed Culture and Politics of Health Care Work series called How Patients Think, intended to give voice to the concerns of patients about their own medical care and the formulation of health policy.

Since surviving a near-fatal car accident, Lous Heshusius has suffered from chronic pain for more than a decade, forcing her to give up her career as a professor of education. Inside Chronic Pain, based in part on the pain journal Heshusius keeps, is a stunning memoir of a life lived in constant pain as well as an insightful and often critical account of the inadequacies of the health care system from physicians to hospitals and health insurance companies to understand chronic pain and treat those who suffer from it. Through her own frequently frustrating experiences, she shows how health care providers often ignore, deny, or incorrectly treat chronic pain at immense cost to both the patient and the health care system. She also offers cogent suggestions on improving the quality and outcome of chronic pain care and management, using her encounters with exceptional medical professionals as models.

Inside Chronic Pain deals with pain's dramatic and destructive effects on one's sense of self and identity. It chronicles the chaos that takes place, the paralyzing effect of severe pain, the changes in personality that ensue, and the corrosive effects of severe pain on the ability to attend to day-to-day tasks. It describes how one's social life falls apart and isolation takes over. It also relates moments of happiness and beauty and describes how rooting the self in the present is crucial in managing pain.

A unique feature of Inside Chronic Pain is the clinical commentary by Dr. Scott M. Fishman, president of the American Pain Foundation. Fishman has long tried to improve the lives of patients like Heshusius. His medical perspective on her very human narrative will help physicians and other clinicians better understand and treat patients with chronic pain."

An indispensable resource that empowers fibromyalgia patients to take charge of a debilitating disease and get the health care they deserve.
Fibromyalgia--a painful, exhausting, and often misdiagnosed disease--affects up to 12 million Americans (90 percent of them women). And because many health care professionals are still learning how to diagnosis and treat its confusing symptoms, patients living with the disorder must become proactive and informed consumers for their own health. The expert advice found within The 10 Best Questions(TM) for Living with Fibromyalgia gives readers the answers they need to get the best care possible and enjoy a more normal life. This essential book provides the Best Questions that patients should ask their doctors, partners, children, and friends, accompanied by the "best answers" drawn from cutting edge research and extensive interviews with the top experts in the field. There are chapters on what to ask about your diagnosis, test results, second opinions, for ongoing disease management, to lose weight, get more sleep, and to make other healthy lifestyle changes. This practical and holistic book also offers Best Questions and advice for fibromyalgia patients for their relationships with partners, children, friends to ensure emotional, financial, and spiritual health. Each chapter concludes with The Magic Question(TM), the one crucial question most people never think to ask until it's too late.

Physical Signs in Medicine and Surgery - An Atlas of Rare, Lost and Forgotten Physical Signs: The work for this text began over two decades ago as Dr. Ashley White was researching ancient diseases and their initial presentations for prevention of future pandemic plagues. This evidence based paleopathology research has granted Dr. White access to some of the world's most sensitive archaeological sites. These locations have been in England, Scotland, North and Central America, Nine additional countries in Europe, Asia - including Russia and China, the Middle East, North and Sub-Sahara Africa, and South America including the Amazon Basin. This comprehensive Atlas was originally conceived for doctors providing needed care in dangerous, rugged and remote situations often created by catastrophe, disasters, epidemics, and military conflicts. It is within these serious environments that this Atlas can assist practitioners find the most obscure and difficult diagnosis where access to x-rays and modern laboratory equipment are often impossible. Designed with a unique reference style of key words tagged to known medical systems the Atlas functions as an easy to use clinical field manual whether in use in an advanced medical care unit or in the harsh realm of the jungle. This extensive compendium of rare medical findings, together with an incredible group of landmark essays make this the most complete Atlas of physical signs ever published.

On December 2, 2004, Gwen Olsen's niece Megan committed suicide by setting herself on fire-and ended her tortured life as a victim of the adverse effects of prescription drugs.

Olsen's poignant autobiographical journey through the darkness of mental illness and the catastrophic consequences that lurk in medicine cabinets around the country offers an honest glimpse into alarming statistics and a health care system ranked last among nineteen industrialized nations worldwide. As a former sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry for several years, Olsen learned firsthand how an unprecedented number of lethal drugs are unleashed in the United States market, but her most heartrending education into the dangers of antidepressants would come as a victim and ultimately, as a survivor.

Rigorously researched and documented, Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher is a moving human drama that shares one woman's unforgettable journey of faith, forgiveness, and healing.

AUTHOR BIO
Gwendolyn Leslie Olsen spent more than a decade as a sales rep in the pharmaceutical industry working for health care giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abbott Laboratories. She is a writer, speaker, and mental health activist who lives outside Austin, Texas.

This comprehensive, authoritative text presents the scientific foundations and clinical practice of neural blockade in both regional anesthesia and the management of pain. The descriptions and illustrations of pain mechanisms are considered classic examples. The Fourth Edition has been refined for clarity and flows logically from principles and pharmacology, to techniques for each anatomic region, to applications. This edition has two new co-editors and several new chapters on topics including neurologic complications, neural blockade for surgery, treatment of pain in older people, and complications in pain medicine. A companion Website will offer the fully searchable text and an image bank.

Richard Dubin is a talented distance runner at a major southern university. Pain is the story of Richard's senior year as he proceeds with varying success through the year, from cross country through the Olympic Trials, all the while trying to manage a seesawing relationship with a beautiful and fascinatingly unpredictable woman, 10 years his senior. Richard's university is one of the great American party schools and we are treated to a series of uninhibited college blowouts, featuring copious liquid consumption, naked kegstands, nude relays. . . and, most daring of all, poetry reading! As the pressures mount, Richard's life begins to unravel. All the forces converge at the Olympic Trials in New Orleans and it is there that Richard comes to the edge of the abyss.

Prescription opioids are dangerous in the hands of drug abusers, but they are also beneficial or even lifesaving for millions of people who otherwise would live with chronic pain. Clinicians who prescribe opioids are often caught between their professional obligation to relieve suffering and their desire to avoid contributing to the nonmedical consumption of controlled substances.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Approximately 23.3 million operations were performed in 1989 in the United States, and most of these involved some form of pain management. Unfortunately, clinical surveys continue to indicate that routine orders for intramuscular injections of opioid "as needed"-the standard practice in many clinical settings-fail to relieve pain in about half of postoperative patients. Postoperative pain contributes to patient discomfort, longer recovery periods, and greater use of scarce health care resources and may compromise patient outcomes. There is wide variation in the methods used to manage postoperative and other acute pain, ranging from no set strategy to a comprehensive team approach as advocated in this clinical practice guideline. This guideline sets forth procedures to minimize the incidence and severity of acute pain after surgical and medical procedures and pain associated with trauma in adults and children. It offers clinicians a coherent yet flexible approach to pain assessment and management for use in daily practice. Although it is not practical or desirable to eliminate all postoperative and other acute pain, an aggressive approach to pain assessment and management can reduce such pain, increase patient comfort and satisfaction, and in some cases, contribute to improved patient outcomes and shorter hospital stays. This clinical practice guideline was developed under the sponsorship of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR), Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. To develop the guideline, AHCPR convened an interdisciplinary expert panel made up of physicians, nurses, a pharmacist, a psychologist, a physical therapist, a patient/consumer, and an ethicist. The panel first undertook an extensive and interdisciplinary clinical review of current needs, therapeutic practices and principles, and emerging technologies for pain assessment and management. Second, the panel conducted a comprehensive review of the field to define the existing knowledge base and critically evaluate the assumptions and common wisdom in the field. Third, the panel initiated peer review of guideline drafts and field review with intended users in clinical sites. Comments from these reviews were assessed and used in developing the guideline.

Through her extensive experience with pain clinics, author Phyllis Berger -- a chronic pain sufferer herself -- realized that pain relief was highly dependent on stress factors. She found relief could be more rapidly achieved by blocking pain with electrical currents and acupuncture, relieving anxiety and releasing emotions, and increasing pain-free movements with exercises, especially enjoyable exercises that build strength and endurance. Focusing on the brain and its complex chemical interactions and electrical circuitry, "The Journey to Pain Relief provides solid information, advice, and treatment suggestions to empower both the chronic pain sufferer and the pain therapist. The author authoritatively describes ways to combine a wide range of treatments that tap into the body's inherent knowledge and ability to heal, increase exercise ability, stimulate the production of helpful chemical substances in the body, and encourage the positive attitudes that will bring many more patients to that often elusive destination of pain relief and control.

This riveting book takes the reader around the globe and through the centuries to discover how different cultures have sought to combat and treat physical pain. With colourful stories and sometimes frightening anecdotes, Dr Thomas Dormandy describes a chequered progression of breakthroughs, haphazard experiments, ignorant attitudes, and surprising developments in human efforts to control pain. Attitudes toward pain and its perception have changed, as have the means of pain relief and scientific understanding. Dr Dormandy offers a thoroughly fascinating, multicultural history that culminates with a discussion of today's successes, and failures, in the struggle against pain. The book's exploration is fused with accounts of the development of specific methods of pain relief, including the use of alcohol, plants, hypnosis, religious faith, stoic attitudes, local anaesthesia, general anaesthesia and modern analgesics. Dr Dormandy also looks at the most recent advances in pain clinics and palliative care for patients with terminal disease as well as the prospects for loosening pain's grip in the future. Thomas Dormandy, MD, is a retired consultant pathologist, Whittington Hospital, University of London, and Brunel University, London. He is the author of the prize-winning book 'The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis' and 'Opium: Reality's Dark Dream', published by Yale University Press.

-- Are patients aware of the fact that pharmacological therapies stress the brain in ways which may prevent or postpone symptomatic and functional recovery ? ==================================================== Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent is a critical appraisal of the medications which an estimated 20% of Americans consume on a regular (and sometimes involuntary) basis. It is the philosophically, epidemiologically, and scientifically supported revelation of how and why psychiatry's drug therapies have contributed to a standard of care which frequently does more to harm than to cure. Extensively researched and documented, the book addresses: -- the process by which psychiatric drugs reach the market -- the history and philosophy of Evidence Based Medicine -- the common flaws in research methodologies which negate the validity of the psychiatric RCT (Randomized Controlled Trial) -- the problem of allostatic load (how drugs stress the body) -- the history, long term effects, and utility of the drugs used to suppress symptoms of depression, psychosis, inattention and hyperactivity -- the effectiveness of alternatives to medication Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent exposes the current crisis in medical ethics and epistemology, and attempts to restore to psychiatry an authentically informed consent to care.