Adjunctive Therapy for Pain Management
Adjunctive therapy is an option available to help those suffering from pain. It usually works in conjunction with other treatment options and serves as a complementary form of medicine, similar to meditation, yoga, massage therapy or breathing exercises. Adjunctive therapies come in many forms such as meditation, yoga, massage therapy or breathing exercises.
Adjunctive medications, also known as adjuncts, are drugs added to opioid therapy in order to maximize its effectiveness. Usually nonopioids, these can improve pain management by increasing analgesia, attenuating side effects from opioids and decreasing the risk of overdose.
Common adjunct medications used for chronic pain syndromes include anticonvulsants, benzodiazepines, calcium channel blockers, nifedipine, morphine, pentoxifylline and sedatives. These drugs may also be prescribed to manage chronic neuropathic pain conditions like postherpetic neuralgia or painful diabetic neuropathy.
Effective comfort therapy for hospitalised patients is an integral component of patient-centered care. It can reduce the intensity of discomfort, anxiety and stress that patients may experience during their stay in the hospital, allowing them to focus on their medical condition.
Alternative, non-pharmacological techniques for patient comfort are not often utilized in hospitals. However, studies have demonstrated their efficacy in complementing analgesic agents and optimizing pain therapy options, thus decreasing healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes.
This multi-cycle Quality Improvement (QI) project offered alternative therapies to inpatients who reported discomfort or little to no relief from prescribed analgesics and adjuvant agents. The main outcome measure was patient comfort after these alternative therapies were provided.
Discomfort in hospitalized patients remains one of the greatest obstacles to successful patient outcomes, leading to increased readmission rates and a reduced quality of life. Non-pharmacological methods have been found to be successful at decreasing discomfort on patient health and are now being increasingly utilized alongside current pain medication therapies in hospital settings.
In this review, we examined the evidence for various adjunctive therapies for apical periodontitis, such as antimicrobial photodynamic therapy, diode laser canal irradiation, Nd:YAG laser canal irradiation, Er;Cr:YSGG laser canal irradiation and ultrasonically activated irrigation (UAI). A total of 14 studies met our inclusion criteria.
