No abstract

Although patients with chronic pain are often considered to have reduced levels of everyday physical activity, data on their activity levels are scarce and inconclusive. Therefore, this study explored whether patients with chronic pain have reduced activity levels, as objectively measured with an activity monitor. The activity monitor is based on long-term ambulatory monitoring of signals from body-fixed accelerometers during everyday life, aimed at assessment of mobility-related activities. Measurements with the monitor were performed during a weekday (24 h) in 18 patients with chronic pain and compared with measurements obtained from 18 gender and age matched healthy comparison subjects. The mean (SD) age of the patients was 44 (11) years, and the mean (SD) duration of their complaints was 8 (7) years. Compared with the healthy subjects, the duration of dynamic activities was not significantly reduced (p=0.10) in the patient group. Mean (SD) intensity of everyday physical activity was lower (p=0.03) in the patients than in the healthy comparison subjects (0.021 [0.006] g versus 0.026 [0.004] g), and patients spent more time lying down (47.0 [10.2]% versus 34.3 [5.6] %; p=0.000) and less time sitting (29.2 [8.9]% versus 36.4 [9.3]%; p=0.03) than the healthy comparison subjects. In spite of significant differences between patients and healthy comparison subjects for some aspects of the activity pattern (which may reflect pain behaviour), the impact of chronic pain on everyday physical activity was relatively small.

Background: This double-blind, randomized, controlled trial investigated the effect of the phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor tadalafil on the microcirculation in patients with cold Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) in one lower extremity.

The aim of this research was to assess the ability of an upper limb-activity monitor (ULAM) to discriminate between upper limb usage and non-usage in healthy and disabled subjects during normal daily life. The ULAM was based on ambulatory accelerometry and consisted of several acceleration sensors connected to a small recorder worn around the waist. While wearing this ULAM, four healthy and four disabled subjects performed an activity protocol representing normal daily life upper limb usage or non-usage. The motility feature (derived from the raw acceleration signals) was used as a measure of the extent of upper limb usage. Agreement scores between ULAM output and videotape recordings (reference method) were calculated. ULAM data that were of special interest for rehabilitation were detected satisfactorily (overall agreement 83.9%). There were no systematic differences in the agreement percentages between healthy and disabled subjects for mobility-related activities (p = 0.345) and the different forms of upper limb usage or non-usage (p= 0.715). The ULAM can be used in future studies in subjects with upper limb disorders to discriminate between upper limb usage and non-usage during performance of mobility-related activities to determine activity limitations.