Pain predict genetics: protocol for a prospective observational study of clinical and genetic factors to predict the development of postoperative pain

Introduction
Postoperative pain remains a challenging medical condition impacting the quality of life of every patient. Although several predictive factors for postoperative pain have been identified, an adequate prediction of postoperative pain in patients at risk has not been achieved yet.
The primary objective of this study is to identify specific genetic risk factors for the development of acute and chronic postoperative pain to construct a prediction model facilitating a more personalised postoperative pain management for each individual. The secondary objectives are to build a databank enabling researchers to identify other risk factors for postoperative pain, for instance, demographic and clinical outcome indicators; provide insight into (genetic) factors that predict pharmacological pain relief; investigate the relationship between acute and chronic postoperative pain.

Methods and analysis
In this prospective, observational study, patients who undergo elective surgery will be recruited to a sample size of approximately 10 000 patients. Postoperative acute and chronic pain outcomes will be collected through questionnaires at different time points after surgery in the follow-up of 6 months. Potential genetic, demographic and clinical risk factors for prediction model construction will be collected through blood, questionnaires and electronic health records, respectively.
Genetic factors associated with acute and/or chronic postoperative pain will be identified using a genome-wide association analysis. Clinical risk factors as stated in the secondary objectives will be assessed by multivariable regression. A clinical easy-to-use prediction model will be created for postoperative pain to allow clinical use for the stratification of patients.

Ethics and dissemination
The Institutional Review Board of the Radboud university medical centre approved the study (authorisation number: 2012/117). The results of this study will be made available through peer-reviewed scientific journals and presentations at relevant conferences, which will finally contribute to personalised postoperative pain management.

Trial registration number
NCT02383342.

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Novembre 2022

Impact of conditional cash transfer programmes on antenatal care service uptake in low and middle-income countries: a systematic review

Objective
Antenatal care (ANC) is crucial to protecting the health of pregnant women and their unborn children; however, the uptake of ANC among pregnant women in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) is suboptimal. One popular strategy to increase the uptake of health services, including ANC visits, are conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. CCT programmes require beneficiaries to comply with certain conditionalities in order to receive a financial sum. A systematic review was carried out to determine whether CCT programmes have a positive impact on ANC uptake in LMIC populations.

Methods
Electronic databases CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, Maternity and Infant Care and Global Health were searched from database inception to 21 January 2022. Reference checking and grey literature searches were also applied. Eligible study designs were randomised controlled trials, controlled before-after studies and interrupted time series analysis. Risk of bias assessments were undertaken for each study by applying the Risk of Bias 2 tool and the Risk of Bias in Non-randomised Studies of Interventions tool.

Results
Out of 1534 screened articles, 18 publications were included for analysis. Eight studies reported statistically non-significant results on all reported outcomes. Seven studies demonstrated statistically significant positive effects ranging from 5.5% to 45% increase in ANC service uptake. A further three studies reported small but statistically significant impact of CCT on the use of ANC services in both positive (2.5% increase) and negative (3.7% decrease) directions. Subanalysis of results disaggregated by socioeconomic status (SES) indicated that ANC attendance may be more markedly improved by CCT programmes in low SES populations; however, results were inconclusive.

Conclusion
Our evidence synthesis presented here demonstrated a highly heterogeneous evidence base pertaining to the impact of CCTs on ANC attendance. More high-powered studies are required to elucidate the true impact of CCT programmes on ANC uptake, with particular focus on the barriers and enablers of such programmes in achieving intended outcomes.

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Novembre 2022

Nomogram models to predict low fertilisation rate and total fertilisation failure in patients undergoing conventional IVF cycles

Objectives
To establish visualised prediction models of low fertilisation rate (LFR) and total fertilisation failure (TFF) for patients in conventional in vitro fertilisation (IVF) cycles.

Design
A retrospective cohort study.

Setting
Data from August 2017 to August 2021 were collected from the electronic records of a large obstetrics and gynaecology hospital in Sichuan, China.

Participants
A total of 11 598 eligible patients who underwent the first IVF cycles were included. All patients were randomly divided into the training group (n=8129) and the validation group (n=3469) in a 7:3 ratio.

Primary outcome measure
The incidence of LFR and TFF.

Results
Logistic regressions showed that ovarian stimulation protocol, primary infertility and initial progressive sperm motility were the independent predictors of LFR, while serum luteinising hormone and P levels before human chorionic gonadotropin injection and number of oocytes retrieved were the critical predictors of TFF. And these indicators were incorporated into the nomogram models. According to the area under the curve values, the predictive ability for LFR and TFF were 0.640 and 0.899 in the training set and 0.661 and 0.876 in the validation set, respectively. The calibration curves also showed good concordance between the actual and predicted probabilities both in the training and validation group.

Conclusion
The novel nomogram models provided effective methods for clinicians to predict LFR and TFF in traditional IVF cycles.

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Novembre 2022

(C)onsumer focused (E)ducation on p(A)racetamol (S)ide (E)ffects, i(N)adequate (O)utcomes and (W)eaning (CEASE NOW) for individuals with low back pain: results of a feasibility study

Objectives
To determine the feasibility of a patient-education booklet to support patients with low back pain (LBP) to reduce paracetamol intake.

Design
Single group, repeated measures feasibility study.

Setting
Community.

Participants
Adults experiencing LBP of any kind and self-reporting consumption of paracetamol for LBP weekly for at least 1 month were invited to participate.

Intervention
Participants received a patient-education booklet 1 week after the baseline measures were collected. The intervention was designed to change beliefs, increase knowledge and self-efficacy to deprescribe paracetamol for their LBP and create discussion with a health professional through the mechanisms of motivation, capacity and opportunity.

Primary outcome measures
Feasibility of recruitment procedures, data collection and acceptability of the intervention.

Secondary outcome measures
Changes in motivation, self-efficacy, opportunity to deprescribe paracetamol for their LBP, paracetamol usage and LBP clinical outcomes at baseline, 1-week and 1-month follow-up.

Results
A total of 24 participants were recruited into the study within the timeframe of 3 months from study advertisement and all completed the study follow-up. There were no missing data for any outcome measure across all follow-up points, 22 (91.6%) participants were willing to participate in a future randomised control trial (RCT) and over 60% of participants responded positively to questions regarding acceptability of the patient-educational booklet. Overall, at the 1-month follow-up, approximately two thirds (15/24) of participants had an increase in motivation and self-efficacy scores and had discussed or intended to discuss their paracetamol use for LBP with a health professional.

Conclusions
The results of this study demonstrate that the patient-education booklet is feasible to implement, and both the intervention and study design were well-received by participants. This study supports the undertaking an RCT to assess the effects of the patient-education booklet on deprescribing paracetamol in people with LBP.

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Novembre 2022

Effects of COVID-19 on paediatric cardiac centres in low-income and middle-income countries: a mixed-methods study

Objectives
The aim of this study was to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on paediatric cardiac services in critical access centres in low-income and middle-income countries.

Design
A mixed-methods approach was used.

Setting
Critical access sites that participate in the International Quality Improvement Collaborative (IQIC) for congenital heart disease (CHD) were identified.

Participants
Eight IQIC sites in low-income and middle-income countries agreed to participate.

Outcome measures
Differences in volume and casemix before and during the pandemic were identified, and semistructured interviews were conducted with programme representatives and analysed by two individuals using NVivo software. The qualitative component of this study contributed to a better understanding of the centres’ experiences and to identify themes that were common across centres.

Results
In aggregate, among the seven critical access sites that reported data in both 2019 and 2020, there was a 20% reduction in case volume, though the reduction varied among programmes. Qualitative analysis identified a universal impact for all programmes related to Access to Care/Clinical Services, Financial Stability and Professional/Personal Issues for healthcare providers.

Conclusions
Our study identified and quantified a significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on critical access to CHD surgery in low-income and middle-income countries, as well as a significant adverse impact on both the skilled workforce needed to treat CHD and on the institutions in which care is delivered. These findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major threat to access to care for children with CHD in resource-constrained environments and that this effect may be long-lasting beyond the global emergency. Efforts are needed to preserve vulnerable CHD programmes even during unprecedented pandemic situations.

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Novembre 2022

Study protocol for an integrative theory review of the concept of unidentified pain

Introduction
Most definitions of pain require individuals experiencing pain to report their pain. There are three groups who may not always report pain including those who: (1) lack the cognitive ability to verbally communicate their pain and also lack a proxy/surrogate to report pain for them; (2) lack the cognitive ability to verbally communicate their pain but have a proxy to report the pain; and (3) have the cognitive ability to verbally report pain but are unable or unwilling to do so. Clinicians may not be able to determine which patients are at risk for unidentified pain. Therefore, in this study, we present a protocol for an integrative review with the aim of identifying existing theoretical approaches to understanding unidentified pain.

Methods and analysis
We propose a systematic overview of the existing theoretical approaches to understanding ‘unidentified pain’. We will use Campbell and colleagues’ criteria for systematic reviews of theory and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols guidelines. Our search will be broad to cover theoretical approaches to ‘unidentified pain’ using MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase and Google Scholar. Covidence systematic review software will be used for data extraction and analysis. Then, qualitative content analysis will take place. The content analysis will be presented as a narrative.

Ethics and dissemination
No human or animal subjects will be involved. The results are to be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at conferences in the USA and internationally.

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Novembre 2022

What is the relationship between physical activity and chronic pain in older adults? A systematic review and meta-analysis protocol

Introduction
Chronic pain is highly prevalent in older adults and can cause functional limitations, negatively affecting health and quality of life. Physical activity is a non-pharmacological approach used to prevent chronic pain as it promotes the release of endogenous opioids that block pain sensitivity. Therefore, we developed a systematic review protocol to analyse the relationship between physical activity and the occurrence and intensity of chronic pain in older adults.

Methods and analyses
The systematic review will search PubMed, Scopus and Embase databases. The inclusion criteria will be observational studies that had primary chronic pain as an outcome, including persistent and intermittent pain. The population will include older adults from the community, living in a long-stay institution, or in outpatient follow-up. There will be no restriction regarding the year of publication and articles published in Portuguese, English and Spanish will be analysed. Effect or impact measures will be quantified, including OR, HR, prevalence ratio, incidence ratio and relative risk with their 95% CIs. If the data allow, a meta-analysis will be performed. The results may help understand the impact of physical activity as a potential protection factor against the occurrence of pain later in life as well as promote strategic prevention plans and public policies that encourage this practice in older adults.

Ethics and dissemination
Ethical approval is not required. The results will be disseminated via submission for publication to a peer-reviewed journal when complete.

PROSPERO registration number
CRD42021282898.

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Novembre 2022

Intermittent Chest Pain in a 46-Year-Old Patient

A patient in his 40s presented to the emergency department with chest pain and diaphoresis, which had also occurred 2 days earlier. He had a 20 pack-year history of smoking but no family history of cardiovascular disease. The patient’s electrocardiogram showed biphasic T waves in leads V2 and V3. What would you do next?

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Novembre 2022

Acupuncture for low back and/or pelvic pain during pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

Objective
Acupuncture is emerging as a potential therapy for relieving pain, but the effectiveness of acupuncture for relieving low back and/or pelvic pain (LBPP) during the pregnancy remains controversial. This meta-analysis aims to investigate the effects of acupuncture on pain, functional status and quality of life for women with LBPP pain during the pregnancy.

Design
Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Data sources
The PubMed, EMBASE databases, Web of Science and Cochrane Library were searched for relevant randomised controlled trials (RCTs) from inception to 15 January 2022.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies
RCTs evaluating the effects of acupuncture on LBPP during the pregnancy were included.

Data extraction and synthesis
The data extraction and study quality assessment were independently performed by three reviewers. The mean differences (MDs) with 95% CIs for pooled data were calculated. We assessed the confidence in the evidence using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation framework.

Main outcomes and measures
The primary outcomes were pain, functional status and quality of life. The secondary outcomes were overall effects (a questionnaire at a post-treatment visit within a week after the last treatment to determine the number of people who received good or excellent help), analgesic consumption, Apgar scores >7 at 5 min, adverse events, gestational age at birth, induction of labour and mode of birth.

Results
This meta-analysis included 10 studies, reporting on a total of 1040 women. Overall, acupuncture significantly relieved pain during pregnancy (MD=1.70, 95% CI: (0.95 to 2.45), p

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Novembre 2022

Biomechanical risk factors for knee osteoarthritis and lower back pain in lower limb amputees: protocol for a systematic review

Introduction
There is a limited research exploring biomechanical risk factors for the development of knee osteoarthritis (KOA) and lower back pain (LBP) between lower limb amputee subgroups, (eg, transtibial amputees (TTA) vs transfemoral amputees (TFA), or TTA dysvascular vs TTA traumatic). Previous reviews have focused primarily on studies where symptoms of KOA or LBP are present, however, due to limited study numbers, this hinders their scope and ability to compare between amputee subgroups. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to descriptively compare biomechanical risk factors for developing KOA and LBP between lower limb amputee subgroups, irrespective of whether KOA or LBP was present.

Methods and analysis
This review is currently in progress and screening results are presented alongside the protocol to highlight challenges encountered during data extraction. Five electronic databases were searched (Medline—Web of Science, PubMed, CINAHL, Embase and Scopus). Eligible studies were observational or interventional, reporting biomechanical gait outcomes for individual legs in adult lower limb amputees during flat walking, incline/decline walking or stair ascent/descent. Two reviewers screened for eligibility and level of agreement was assessed using Cohen’s Kappa. Data extraction is ongoing. Risk of bias will be assessed using a modified Downs and Black method, and outcome measures will be descriptively synthesised.

Ethics and dissemination
There are no ethical considerations for this systematic review. Due to its scope, results are expected to be published in three separate manuscripts: (1) biomechanical risk factors of KOA between TTA and TFA, relative to non-amputees, (2) biomechanical risk factors of LBP between TTA and TFA, relative to non-amputees and (3) biomechanical risk factors of KOA and LBP between TTA with traumatic or dysvascular causes, relative to non-amputees.

PROSPERO registration number
CRD42020158247.

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Novembre 2022