Causality in Perioperative Acute Pain Research

Source: Joseph Donroe, MD, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
Abdominal pain is a frequent presenting concern in both the emergency department and the office setting. Acute abdominal pain is defined as pain lasting less than seven days, while an acute abdomen refers to the abrupt onset of severe abdominal pain with features suggesting a surgically intervenable process. The differential diagnosis of acute abdominal pain is broad; thus, clinicians must have a...

Here we present a protocol to perform intracranial pharmacological experiments followed by pain behavior assays in rodents. This protocol allows researchers to deliver molecular and cellular targets in the brain, for pharmacologic agents in the treatment of...

Source: Laboratories of Judith Danovitch and Nicholaus Noles—University of Louisville
Imagine a young child hears an adult say, “I want to watch the news,” then watches the adult press a button on the remote control. A moment later, the television screen turns on. The next day, the child wants to turn on the television screen to watch cartoons. How does the child know what to do? Is it enough to say, “I want to watch cartoons,” or is pushing the button on the...

Causality or causation is a fundamental concept in epidemiology, vital for understanding the relationships between various factors and health outcomes. Despite its importance, there's no single, universally accepted definition of causality within the discipline. Drawing from a systematic review, causality in epidemiology encompasses several definitions, including production, necessary and sufficient, sufficient-component, counterfactual, and probabilistic models. Each has its strengths and...

By assessing pain in response to repetitive or different types of standardized stimuli, dynamic quantitative sensory testing (QST) can reveal changes in the central processing of pain. We present methods to optimize and individualize two dynamic QST measures: temporal summation (TS) and conditioned pain modulation...

We have developed an evoked measure of arthritis pain and coupled it with a standardized method for measuring spontaneous pain in different murine models of chemically induced arthritis. These measures are sensitive and reproducible for different types of joint...