This study illustrates the relative strengths of 14 CDC and seven PROMs to evaluate patients with NTOS, helping validate the selected CDC and highlighting the potential role of pain catastrophizing in functional disability. This cohort will provide valuable information on the utility of different CDC and PROMs to predict treatment outcomes.

The interrelationship of life stress, social support, and glucose regulation was studied in eighty patients with diabetes mellitus (insulin-dependent = 40, non-insulin-dependent = 40). Glucose control was measured using glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1); stress and social support were determined by the Social Readjustment Rating Scale and a Visual Analog Scale of social support. A two-way analysis of variance [social support (high/low) by life stress (high/low)] revealed that neither social support nor life stress was independently associated with HbA1. However, a significant interaction between these parameters was found. When reported stress was low, the HbA1 means were not statistically different for both high and low social support groups. As stress increased, variations in social support were associated with differences in glucose control. Under conditions of high stress, low social support subjects had significantly higher HbA1 than subjects with high social support (mean = 11.8% vs. mean = 9.9%, p = .04). These data suggest that during stressful times social support may insulate patients with diabetes from the adverse physiologic and behavioral consequences of stress and thereby foster better glucose control.

Background: Impaired performance on tasks assessing executive function has been linked to chronic pain. We hypothesised that poor performance on tests assessing the ability to adjust thinking in response to changing environmental stimuli (cognitive flexibility) would be associated with persistent post-surgical pain. Methods: We conducted a single-centre prospective observational study in two perioperative cohorts: patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty or noncardiac chest surgical procedures. The co-primary outcome measures compared preoperative performance on the Trail Making Test and the coloureword matching Stroop test between patients who developed persistent post-surgical pain and those who did not. Secondary outcome measures included the associations between these test scores and pain severity at 6 months. Results: Of 300 participants enrolled, 198 provided 6 month follow-up data. There were no significant differences in preoperative Trail Making Test B minus A times (33 vs 34 s; P¼0.59) or Stroop interference T-scores (47th vs 48th percentile; P¼0.50) between patients with and without persistent post-surgical pain (primary outcome). Of those who reported persistent post-surgical pain, poorer baseline performance on the coloureword matching Stroop test was associated with higher pain scores at 6 months in both knee arthroplasty (r¼e0.32; P¼0.04) and chest (r¼e0.44; P¼0.02) surgeries (secondary outcome). Conclusions: Preoperative cognitive flexibility test performance was not predictive of overall persistent post-surgical pain incidence 6 months after surgery. However, poor performance on the coloureword matching Stroop test was independently associated with more severe persistent post-surgical pain in both cohorts. Clinical trial registration: NCT02579538.

This study investigated the relationship between hypnotic susceptibility and the endogenous eyeblink with 27 subjects who were assigned to groups of high susceptibles, low susceptibles and simulators on the basis of cutoff scores from the Harvard Group Scales of Hypnotic Susceptibility: Form A and the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales: Form C. Using a repeated-measures design, oculomotor data were collected during two separate conditions, waking and hypnotized, while subjects performed a visual task requiring the discrimination of short light flashes (200 ms) from long light flashes (400 ms). Although results partially replicated previous studies, with high susceptibles blinking significantly less than low susceptibles across both conditions, no effect was found for the hypnotic state. Failure of the simulating group to meet assumptions in the waking condition allowed no conclusions regarding impact of task demands on the endogenous eyeblink.

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