Introduction:Collusion is frequently encountered but least studied entity in palliative care services in India. Impact of collusion is manifold and identifying it requires good communication skills. Once identified, it gives an indication for existing healthy versus developing unhealthy collusion to be dealt within families.Objective:The objective of this study was to identify the prevalence of collusion and its clinical and psychological correlates among patients and caregivers in a palliative cancer care.Materials and Methods:We describe systematic identification and unraveling of collusion across multiple levels in a palliative cancer care eventually drafting an algorithm to unravel the collusion. Patients and families were recruited from in-patient palliative care services after obtaining written informed consent. Qualitative interviews were conducted using collusion questionnaire, EQ5D, Visual Analog Scale, and NIMHANS psychiatric morbidity screen.Results:Among 62 cancer families interviewed, we identified that 71% collusion exists between doctor and patient, 61.3% between doctor and caregiver, and 75.83% between patient and caregiver. Around 50% collusions were unraveled systematically. Collusion was more prevalent in patients with rapid progression of illness (<6 months), patients with poor coping skills, and preference of being interviewed alone.Conclusion:This statistics suggests that collusion goes unnoticed in terminal illnesses and communication skills play a major role in identifying and dealing with collusion. This also unearths need to formulate interview techniques and structured assessment tools or questionnaire in palliative cancer care which are sparse.

No abstract

The definition of functional pain syndromes is varied across literature. No effort has been made to see all functional pain disorder groups under broad nomenclature which would exclude conditions for which pathophysiology is strongly known. Since these disorders are commonly treated with alternative treatment modalities and impose significant burden on health utilization, an effort to look into studies on yoga-based interventions on 'functional pain syndromes' (FPS) was made. This study defined FPS as 'Chronic relapsing remitting pain conditions, the origin of which is difficult to trace with no definite physical pathology on clinical suspicion or available laboratory measures and are valid based on subjective pain reporting, associated distress and socio-occupational dysfunction'. Chronic headache, neck pain, back pain, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and somatoform pain disorders were included for this review. The review found four meta-analyses on the selected topic both indicating modest efficacy and benefit of yoga in these disorders. Future efforts should be directed to do a large meta-analysis of functional pain syndromes.

No abstract