External links on Pain and Pain Management

I found the number of these starting to be a bit excessive, so pulled them out here. I cannot give any proof of their veracity or quality other than how I use theme – and where I have done so, I have added personal experiences of using them. I have tried to not list sites I did not find useful, but if you have any site that you think should be added, or which you think has issues, do let me know via PM.

• A decent site about Pain Management, is hurt.com. It has a number of real life stories about a plethora of diagnoses and approaches.
• Similarly, Medical News Today has an interesting feed on pain, though you may have to register as a patient or other party to see it.
• The Pain Concern charity may be useful for some, information they provide all at the Pain Concern website. For me, the stories they provide are sickeningly upbeat, seeming to suggest that pain may fade or go. For that, though, read above! However, I have already mentioned their excellent video, Struggling to be me – view it!.
• The British Pain Society is for professionals dealing with patients in pain, but has some useful information, particularly on their booklist. It also has a quarterly newletter, Pain News.
• Pain UK is an alliance of charities dealing with pain. They also have a partner Facebook page and a more useful open group – to which I sometimes add interesting information and track posts.
• A recent initiative is the Alleviate Pain Data Hub and its Advanced Pain Discovery Platform (APDP). There are a lot of intentions, here, including accurate coding as well as accessing merged databases.  Early days, but we’ll see how it goes.
• The USC Pain Centre at Help for Pain has a number of useful documents explaining the differences between pain and outlines some research – most recently about other’s perception of pain.
• On a similar theme, the Liverpool Pain Research Institute (PRI) conducts its own research but views their website as a hub for similar pain research
• And whilst we’re on academic instritutions, we really should mention the Oxford research into pain which (confusingly, frankly) is spread over a number of sites including: Bandolier Journal and the Nuffield Division of Anaesthetics (NDA).

IASP

The IASP (International Association for the Study of Pain) publishes a journal, PAIN, but requires membership – which is pretty frustrating for patients and sufferers (see the frustration there? Breathe, Tim, breathe). It also runs the “World Congress on Pain”.

Pain News

The above-mentioned British Pain Society newsletter (Pain News) may be interesting. I am exploring it now. The September, 2014 edition includes reference to a bunch of Patient information leaflets for drugs used in the treatment of chronic pain. These can be found at the Faculty of Pain Medicine’s website. This includes Amitriptyline, Gabapentin, Pregabalin, Duloxetine and Nortriptyline (produced between the Faculty of Pain Medicine of Royal College of Anaesthetists, British Pain Society, Royal College of Nursing, Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Pain UK).

Pregabalin

For pregabalin (or Lyrica as it is known by) information, try the following:

• Basic (and a bit more) information at wikipaedia, including informationon one or two fines and mis-selling in the USA – whether or not the claims made were true or not
• Absorption/clinical pharmacokinetics: RxList’s Clinical Pharmacology for Lyrica/pregabalin. The preceding and following pages in this link also provide copious amounts of information on the drug.
• A simpler but nonetheless fairly comprehensive examination of Lyrica at emc+ (medicines.org.uk)

All sites correct as of September 2014.