LETTER

‘Pain sensitivity’ is an inaccurate term based on a conflation of stimulus and response that obscures our understanding of the pain experience, write John Quintner and Milton Cohen.

In the seventh and final instalment of our series on pain sensitivity, Darren Beales FACP and Tim Mitchell FACP address some frequently asked questions.

As a sole private practitioner running a small clinic in the Northern Beaches region of Sydney, Cathy Molloy hadn’t much considered undertaking a research project until a little girl with hereditary spastic paraparesis walked into her clinic. With some lateral thinking, a motivated parent and a dog named Checkers, Cathy embarked on a case study. 

The results from a large clinical study on the use of cognitive functional therapy to treat people with chronic low back pain have shown that the approach significantly improves outcomes both clinically and from an economic perspective. Peter Kent and Peter O’Sullivan talk about the trial.

In the sixth instalment of our series on pain sensitivity, Darren Beales FACP and Tim Mitchell FACP provide further considerations for its management.

The benefits of taking affordances into account when prescribing exercise for people living with chronic pain are outlined by Erin MacIntyre.

PHYSIOTHERAPY RESEARCH FOUNDATION Melissa Trudinger talks to Seeding Grant recipient Dr Emre Ilhan about his study looking at whether common screening tools for neuropathic pain can be validated for use in children.

Social media has the potential to contribute to physiotherapy research and practice by disseminating messages about low back pain.

The Australian Pain Society’s 43rd Annual Scientific Meeting was held in Canberra in April. This year’s theme was ‘In the IASP Global Year for Integrative Pain Care’ and several sessions considered pain in children. Here three of the presenters share their work on gaining a better understanding of how children perceive pain and on new ways to approach pain education for this population.