‘Relieving’ the Year of 2022 in Pain Management

Keywords::

• chronic pain
• COVID-19
• neuropathic pain
• opioids
• pain management
• top content

To all our readers, we would like to begin by wishing you all a Happy New Year and welcoming you to Volume 13 of Pain Management, the first issue of 2023. In this foreword, we will reflect on the past year as we bring you some of the highlights from Volume 12.

We would like to express our gratitude to all our readers, contributing authors, peer reviewers and Editorial Board members for their continued support and guidance as we continue to provide the most recent developments around pain management strategies.

Content highlights of 2022

This year, we have continued to present the most recent and interesting developments in pain management as well as provide a platform for professionals to address the significant challenges in the field.

At the time of writing, our most read article was a Case Series entitled “Myofascial pain syndrome and SARS-CoV-2: a case series”[1]. In the paper, the authors hypothesized that there was a relationship between COVID-19 and myofascial pain syndrome after observing in a pain clinic that some patients developed myofascial pain syndrome following a diagnosis of COVID-19. In light of these findings, the authors recommended a future cohort study with patients who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 to investigate the development of myofascial pain syndrome independent of other comorbidities.

The second most read article was a Review entitled “Management of chronic non cancer pain: a framework” [2]. The article explored the current frameworks for the management of chronic non cancer pain and provided alternative approaches to pain management. Given that the use of opioids is a trending topic within the field, the authors also discussed the use of opioid for pain management and how to attain optimal chronic pain management.

Table 1 lists the top five most read articles from Volume 12 of Pain Management [1–5].

Table 1. Top five most read articles from Volume 12 of Pain Management^†.

Rank	Article type	Article title	Author (s)	Volume (issue)	Ref.
1	Case Series	Myofascial pain syndrome and SARS-CoV-2: a case series	Jaldhi Patel & Saba Javed	12 (3)	[1]
2	Review	Management of chronic non-cancer pain: a framework	Stephen E Nadeau & Richard A Lawhern	12 (6)	[2]
3	Case Series	Acute worsening of clinical presentation in CRPS after SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vaccination: a case series	Jessica Zhang & Semih Gungor	12 (3)	[3]
4	Research Article	Real-world evidence of sustained improvement following 60-day peripheral nerve stimulation treatment for pain: a cross-sectional follow-up survey	Matthew J Pingree, Mark FB Hurdle, David A Spinner, Ali Valimahomed, Nathan D Crosby & Joseph W Boggs	12 (5)	[4]
5	Research Article	Tapentadol prolonged release in patients with chronic low back pain: real-world data from the German Pain eRegistry	Michael A Überall , Christian Elling, Christoph Eibl, Gerhard HH Müller-Schwefe, Claudia Lefeber, Myriam Heine & Birgit Heckes	12 (2)	[5]

† As of 21 October 2022.

Pain Management has continued to collaborate with Altmetric to provide authors with an insight into the impact of their work across global news outlets and social media. Table 2 lists Volume 12’s highest performing articles.

Table 2. Articles published in Pain Management in 2022 with the highest Altmetric scores^†.

Rank	Article name	Article type	Author(s)	Volume (Issue)	Altmetric score	Ref.
1	Effectiveness comparison of remote electrical neuromodulation and standard-care medications for acute treatment of chronic migraine: a post-hoc analysis	Short communication	Brian Grosberg, Liron Rabany, Maya Vizel, Alon Ironi, Dagan Harris, Alit Stark-Inbar & Timothy R Smith	12 (7)	262	[6]
2	Management of chronic non-cancer pain: a framework	Review	Stephen E Nadeau & Richard A Lawhern	12 (6)	118	[2]
3	Real-world evidence of sustained improvement following 60-day peripheral nerve stimulation treatment for pain: a cross-sectional follow-up survey	Research Article	Matthew J Pingree, Mark FB Hurdle, David A Spinner, Ali Valimahomed, Nathan D Crosby & Joseph W Boggs	12 (5)	85	[7]
4	Understanding the role of patient preference in the treatment algorithm for chronic low back pain: results from a survey-based study	Research Article	Peter Staats, Timothy Deer, Einar Ottestad, Michael Erdek, David Spinner & Amitabh Gulati	12 (3)	78	[8]
5	HTX-011 effectively reduces postoperative pain intensity and opioid use in the elderly	Research Article	Tina Yip, Jia Hu, Pamela S Hawn, Amy Yamamoto & Gary Oderda	12 (1)	74	[9]

† As of 21 October 2022.

Citations continue to be a useful indicator for determining the impact of an author’s work. A special mention goes to Pain Management’s top three most cited articles published in 2022.

• A research article from the May issue entitled “Localized peripheral neuropathic pain: topical treatment with lidocaine 700 mg medicated plaster in routine clinical practice’”[10].

• A case report entitled “Successful application of spinal cord stimulation in a patient with refractory bilateral meralgia paresthetica,” published in the May issue [11].

• A research article from the September issue entitled “Randomized, controlled trial on the effect of anesthesia on chronic pain after total knee arthroplasty” [12].

A significant achievement for Pain Management was the publication of our first collection on Chronic Neuropathic Pain [13]. This collection compiled a variety of articles that focused on real-world evidence for evaluating pharmacological treatment for Peripheral Neuropathic Pain and comparing various treatments to enhance patient outcomes in clinical practice. We are hoping that this will be the first of many collections to come.

Authorship demographics

Pain Management has continued to collaborate with authors from across the world, and while the majority of our authors continue to originate from North America, this year we saw an increase in the proportion of authors from Asia and South America (Figure 1). In 2023, we are hoping to collaborate with authors from across all continents to publish high-quality articles that cover a variety of topics related to pain management strategies.

Figure 1. Pain Management’s percentage authorship by continent.

Social media

Pain Management readers can keep up to date with the latest journal developments including newly published articles and trending topics within the field across our social media platforms including our Twitter page [14]. Pain Management is associated with the digital site, Neuro Central, provided by Future Science Group [15] and their LinkedIn group which provides a forum for the neurology community to discuss journal content, news and related issues in the field.

Conclusion

We are grateful for the feedback that we receive and would be delighted to hear from you regarding up-and-coming topics you believe that the journal could cover in the future. We welcome unsolicited article proposals in Pain Management. More information on article types can be found on our website [16].

Finally, the author would like to thank you again for your sustained support of Pain Management and, we look forward to working with you in the forthcoming year.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

J Hagan is an employee of Future Science Ltd. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.