Self-management education for rehabilitation inpatients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease: a cluster-randomized controlled trial.

Although inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) affects patients' psychological well-being, previous educational programs have failed to demonstrate effects on psychosocial outcomes and quality of life. Therefore, we developed a group-based psychoeducational program that combined provision of both medical information and psychological self-management skills, delivered in an interactive manner, and evaluated it in a large, cluster-randomized trial. We assigned 540 rehabilitation inpatients suffering from IBD (mean age 43 years, 66% female) to either the new intervention or a control group comprising the same overall intensity and the same medical information, but only general psychosocial information. The primary outcome was patient-reported IBD-related concerns. Secondary outcomes included disease knowledge, coping, self-management skills, fear of progression, anxiety, depression and quality of life. Assessments took place at baseline, end of rehabilitation and after 3 and 12 months.The psychoeducational self-management program did not prove superior to the control group regarding primary and secondary outcomes. However, positive changes over time occurred in both groups regarding most outcomes. The superior effectiveness of the newly developed psychoeducational program could not be demonstrated. Since the intervention and control groups may have been too similar, this trial may have been too conservative to produce between-group effects.

[Benefits of the Curriculum "Social Medicine for the Rehabilitation Team" in Rehabilitation Practise]. / Nutzen des Curriculums "Sozialmedizinische Leistungsbeurteilung im Reha-Team" für die Rehabilitationspraxis.

The Federal German Pension Insurance in cooperation with professional organisations developed a curriculum for further socio-medical education of psychologists/psychotherapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, sports therapists and social workers/social pedagogues involved in medical rehabilitation. This curriculum aims to improve the professional competence of the therapeutic groups named above with regards to their contributions to the socio-medical capacity evaluation and related communication within the rehabilitation team. The curriculum was implemented for the first time in 2013. Using the results of the usibility evaluation the continued education concept was revised and manualised. The manual allows for a wide dissemination of the education concept.

[Functional somatic pain syndromes-nomenclature]. / Funktionelle somatische Schmerzsyndrome-Nomenklatur.

A significant number of pain syndromes to be found in all medical specialties, including pain therapy, can be ascribed to a group that according to the classification of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) is referred to as "pain syndromes with dysfunctional etiology," or according to internal medical terminology as "functional somatic syndromes" (functional disorders), or based on psychiatric nomenclature as "somatoform disorders." Frequent syndromes exhibiting pain as the major symptom include fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic pelvic pain (CPP), tension headache, chronic myoarthropathies of the masticatory system (MAP), and prostatodynia. It is important for practitioners of both somatic and psychosocial medicine to be aware of the terminology used in other fields and the frequency of comorbidities of the individual syndromes. To improve communication between somatic and psychosocial medicine as well as with patients, the authors recommend that pain therapists base their diagnosis on the ICD-10 classification and refrain from using a separate pain therapy nomenclature.

[Functional somatic pain syndromes: summary of hypotheses of their overlap and etiology]. / Funktionelle somatische Schmerzsyndrome. Zusammenfassung der Hypothesen zur Uberlappung und Atiologie.

Currently it is unclear whether functional somatic syndromes can be explained by one common underlying functional syndrome. In any case it does not seem justified to view functional somatic syndromes as purely psychological disorders (somatized anxiety or depression). Psychiatric comorbidity and life time stress including traumatisations are mainly, but not exclusively responsible for triggering health care utilisation. The lowered pain threshold that can be demonstrated clinically and experimentally in fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, tension headache and temporomandibular disorders is currently seen primarily as result of an altered central nervous processing of nociceptive input. In addition some results also hint at a disturbance in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. The predominance of female patients can be due to gender specific illness behaviour as well as to estrogen-induced changes in pain sensitivity. In sum, functional somatic syndromes currently are best explained by a biopsychosocial model of predisposing, triggering and maintaining factors. More research is needed particularly to clarify the role of genetic and of cultural factors.

[Dysfunctional syndromes: their diagnostics and treatment]. / Diagnostik und Therapie funktioneller Schmerzsyndrome.

If a patient presents with symptoms of a functional somatic pain syndrome in the primary care setting, it is important to confirm the diagnosis based on a thorough history and physical examination including selected diagnostic tests to exclude somatic diseases with a similar clinical presentation. Important aspects of psychosomatic medicine in the primary care setting are to discuss the diagnosis, treatment options, and prognosis of the functional psychosomatic pain syndromes with the patient in detail. Patients who present with a functional somatic pain syndrome to secondary or tertiary care centers, should be screened for additional functional pain syndromes. A psychiatric-psychosomatic evaluation might be indicated. Based on criteria of evidence-based medicine, psychotherapy and/or tricyclic antidepressants seem to be the most promising treatment approaches for the functional somatic pain syndromes.