This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: In his Clinical Crossroads article, Dr Koenig¹ discussed an elderly woman with chronic illness and strong religious beliefs. Although the article's purpose was to illuminate research that shows religious beliefs can have a therapeutic effect on chronic illness, we are concerned that some pain treatment options were not explored.

The patient's medical history reveals that her care team unsuccessfully tried many different treatment regimens; however, the article does not mention whether she was ever referred to a pain specialist. There are many other anticonvulsants, antidepressants, and opioids that have demonstrated a therapeutic benefit for some types of neuropathic pain.^2-4 Implantable therapies, including spinal cord stimulation and intrathecal infusions, might also be helpful in carefully selected patients.⁵ In addition, specific psychological interventions can be effective in treating severe chronic pain.⁶

We would ask clinicians to consider referring patients with severe pain to a pain specialist. In the elderly . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

An 83-Year-Old Woman With Chronic Illness and Strong Religious Beliefs
Harold G. Koenig
JAMA. 2002;288(4):487-493.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT