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Biomedical subjects

K Horowitz

Publications and source records attributed to K Horowitz.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Chronic myofascial pain: knowledge of diagnosis and satisfaction with treatment.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between pain patients' knowledge of pain diagnosis and their satisfaction with pain treatment. It was hypothesized that myofascial pain (MP) patients would be less knowledgeable regarding their diagnosis and less satisfied with the results of pain treatment. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Multidisciplinary pain clinic. PATIENTS: Patients (n=65) were divided into two groups after multidisciplinary assessment: MP patients (n=30) and a mixed group of chronic pain patients (MCP) (n=35) with neurologic or rheumatologic disorders. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Patient self-report of their knowledge of pain diagnosis and scores on standardized measures of pain intensity, depressive symptoms, and functional disability. RESULTS: MP patients were significantly less accurate in identifying their diagnosis and the source of their pain and were more likely to believe they suffered a physiologic disturbance "more serious and different" than their physicians had suggested. MP patients were also significantly more dissatisfied with the treatment for pain by physicians and reported particular dissatisfaction with the informational aspects of physician-patient communication. No group differences were obtained for measures of pain severity, depression, disability, pain duration, or compensation/litigation status. CONCLUSION: MP patients appear to have less accurate beliefs regarding their pain symptoms and express more dissatisfaction with physician efforts to treat their pain. These findings emphasize the importance of patient education as a component of chronic pain intervention, particularly for MP patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

PTSD symptoms in urban adolescent girls: compounded community trauma.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the assessments for exposure to violent events and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in a population of urban adolescent girls. METHOD: Seventy-nine urban adolescent girls attending an adolescent medicine clinic were assessed via clinician-assisted self-report measures called the Adolescent Self-Report Trauma Questionnaire. The questionnaire gathered information on demographics, exposure to community and domestic violent events, and PTSD symptoms. RESULTS: The adolescents experienced between 8 and 55 different types of community and domestic violent events, with the mean number of violent events being 28. Hyperarousal cluster symptoms were present in 90%, reexperiencing clusters symptoms in 89%, and avoidance cluster symptoms in 80%, while 67% met symptom criteria for PTSD. Increased number of types of violent events was positively correlated with meeting PTSD criteria (p = .01) and with increased PTSD severity scores (p = .001). CONCLUSIONS: These urban adolescent girls have experienced prolonged and repeated exposure to multiple types of community as well as domestic violent events, via multiple modalities of contact, over time. They reported a high percentage of PTSD symptoms across all three symptom clusters. The authors propose the concept of "compounded community trauma" and discuss its marked impact on female adolescent development.

Adolescent↗