WOW!! 2-Years Of Pain 4-Weeks Of Actipatch, SOLVED!!
Participants in this study reported that they were in pain for an average of about 2 years and that the pain level was currently severe and were classified at the border between being moderately and severely disabled. This latter condition was confirmed by radiological imaging where all but 7% of the samples scored OA grade 2 or higher. In addition, they were recruited after seeking specialist medical assistance. Thus, this sample of subjects could be viewed as chronic pain sufferers who were at least moderately disabled, in severe pain, and had yet to find a treatment to alleviate this pain. Following 4 weeks of treatment, subjects in both treatment arms reported statistically (p?<?0.0001) and clinically significant reduction in disability (NDI) and pain level (VASrest and VASactivity), with clinical significance being defined as a 7.5 point reduction (0–50 points) for NDI [38] and 20 mm reduction (100 mm scale) for VAS [39].
More specifically, following 4 weeks of intervention, the average patient was no longer classified as being even moderately disabled with the pain levels in the PSWT arm in the mild range and in the low-moderate range for the NSAID arm. Importantly, the PSWT arm reported statistically greater reductions for all three of these measures compared to the NSAID arm. The PSWT intervention group also reported using approximately 50% less rescue medication compared to the NSAID arm (p?<?.0001). Moreover, 44% of the PSWT arm used no rescue medication compared to 13% of the NSAID arm subjects. Finally, the PSWT group reported significantly greater overall satisfaction.
Providing non-pharmacological alternatives to NSAIDs in managing COA could also have economic advantages. One recent study indicated that up to 31% of costs in managing arthritis patients can be attributed to NSAID-related complications [40]. Another study indicated that more than 100,000 patients are hospitalized due to NSAID-related GI adverse effects each year, with direct costs between $1800 and $8500 per patient per hospitalization. In the elderly alone, NSAID-related GI adverse effects were reported to cost more than $4 billion a year in the USA [41]. Similarly, in the UK, the cost to each clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) due to NSAID-related GI adverse effects averages £433,000 or an estimated total of £251 million to the UK’s National Health Service [42].
In this study, 9 subjects (9%) in the NSAID arm reported adverse events, with 2 subjects withdrawing from the study due to adverse events. No adverse effects were reported in the PSWT arm. Moreover, no serious adverse side effects associated with the use of PSWT have been reported across a variety of chronic pain etiologies for study periods up to 6 months [27,28,29,30, 32,33,34]. Minor adverse effects that have been reported were related to method of attachment to the skin (taping, application by wraps, etc.). While the data used to gauge the possible magnitude of adverse effects associated with PSWT therapy are relatively small (hundreds of patients from clinical trials and tens of thousands from registry studies), the method of application and mechanism of action associated with PSWT indicate that the risk of adverse side effects is low. This is a major advantage when compared to pharmacological treatments such as NSAID which have been shown to dramatically increase the cost of treatment of chronic disease such as arthritis, due to the significant number of adverse side effects.
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