Chronic pain self-management for older adults: a randomized controlled trial [ISRCTN11899548]

BACKGROUND: Chronic pain is a common and frequently disabling problem in older adults. Clinical guidelines emphasize the need to use multimodal therapies to manage persistent pain in this population. Pain self-management training is a multimodal therapy that has been found to be effective in young to middle-aged adult samples. This training includes education about pain as well as instruction and practice in several management techniques, including relaxation, physical exercise, modification of negative thoughts, and goal setting. Few studies have examined the effectiveness of this therapy in older adult samples. METHODS/DESIGN: This is a randomized, controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of a pain self-management training group intervention, as compared with an education-only control condition. Participants are recruited from retirement communities in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and must be 65 years or older and experience persistent, noncancer pain that limits their activities. The primary outcome is physical disability, as measured by the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire. Secondary outcomes are depression (Geriatric Depression Scale), pain intensity (Brief Pain Inventory), and pain-related interference with activities (Brief Pain Inventory). Randomization occurs by facility to minimize cross-contamination between groups. The target sample size is 273 enrolled, which assuming a 20% attrition rate at 12 months, will provide us with 84% power to detect a moderate effect size of .50 for the primary outcome. DISCUSSION: Few studies have investigated the effects of multimodal pain self-management training among older adults. This randomized controlled trial is designed to assess the efficacy of a pain self-management program that incorporates physical and psychosocial pain coping skills among adults in the mid-old to old-old range

Computed Speckle Decorrelation (CSD) and Its Application for Fatigue Damage Monitoring

A video-based laser speckle technique has been developed for non-contact surface deformation analysis and mapping at speeds approaching video frame rates. This technique, Computed Speckle Decorrelation (CSD), makes use of the speckle decorrelation associated with surface deformation. In its current application, CSD is a method of full field inspection which has been used both to locate fatigue damage sites and to measure damage severity during fatigue deformation in reverse bending fatigue of a cylindrically notched aluminum specimen. With the development of the CSD method it will now be possible to examine in greater detail the progression of fatigue damage in thick graphite/epoxy composite materials, allowing a much faster and much more quantitative analysis than was previously available through film based techniques[1].</p