A Comparison of NSAID and Intramuscular Stimulation Therapy Effectiveness in the Female Patient with Chronic Shoulder Pain

BACKGROUND: Chronic shoulder pain draws the attention of doctors since it is a very common and serious disease at primary care level. The patients with this pain usually have a tendency to see many doctors, to take an abundance of medication, and sometimes to even suffer from depression. The pain and the symp- toms thereof often disable the patients in their every day lives. This study aims to seek the most efficient way of treatment between two therapies, namely, the existing drug therapy based on NSAID and the intramuscular stimulation(herein after IMS) therapy, which has re- cently been introduced, by comparing them in accordance with the following method. METHODS: The two therapies were applied for 3 weeks to female patients aged between 50 and 70 who had visited a hospital over a period of more than 3 months due to this type of pain. The patients were randomly given each therapy although the treatment and monitoring was done by the same physiotherapist. The monitoring was performed four times, the day before the start of treatment, 1 week, 2 weeks and 3 weeks after respectively. It measured the following elements: (1) pain scale by VAS(Visual Analogue Scale), (2) Sleep hygiene scale by VAS, (3) ROM(Range of Motion), Repeated measure ANOVA was used for analysis. RESULTS: While both therapies reduced the pain significantly during the 3 weeks, the study showed that IMS was more effective than the drug therapy in every element monitored(p<0.05). IMS turned out to be more effective the 1st week in every measured element, however, the drug therapy was more effective the 3rd week if compared to the 2nd week in terms of Sleep VAS score. CONCLUSION: IMS is more effective in easing chro nic shoulder pain since it has better results than NSAID in pain VAS score, sleep VAS score and ROM.

Protracted Venous Infusion of 5-Fluorouracil as a Chemotherapy in Colorectal Cancer / 대한암학회지

PURPOSE: The administration of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) by protracted intravenous infusion is an alternative to the bolus administration of 5-FU in patients with advanced colorectal cancers. This study was performed to evaluate the response rate and toxicities of protracted infusion of 5-FU in patients with advanced or recurrent colorectal cancers who had been treated with 5-FU by bolus or shortterm continuous administration. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Between March 1995 and June 1997, twenty-eight patients with advanced colorectal cancer previously exposed to 5-FU based chemotherapy were enrolled in this triaL Patients received 5-FU (250 mg/m(2)/day days 1-28) or 5-FU plus leucovorin (5-FU; 200 mg/m/day days 1-28, leucovorin; 20 mg/m IV days 1, 8, 15, 21) by ambulatory infusion pump. Treatment course was repeated every 42 days until disease progression. RESULT: Twenty-eight patients entered. All 28 patients were assessable for response and toxicity. Five (19%) patients achieved a partial response, with the median response duration of 15 weeks (range; 7-22 weeks), and median survival time of entire patients was 54 weeks (range 7-151+ weeks). Gastrointestinal toxicity, specifically stomatitis was a major toxicity (grade 2, 12%; grade 3, 4%), but hand-foot syndrome was less frequent (5%) compared with other trials with protracted infusion of 5-FU reported in the literature. Hematologic toxicity was generally of low grade. CONCLUSION: Prolonged intravenous infusion of 5-FU can produce a response rate of 19% with low toxicity among patients refractory to bolus or short-term infusion of S-FU.