Pain after earthquake

Abstract

IntroductionOn 6 April 2009, at 03:32 local time, an Mw 6.3 earthquake hit the Abruzzi region of central Italy causing widespread damage in the City of L Aquila and its nearby villages. The earthquake caused 308 casualties and over 1,500 injuries, displaced more than 25,000 people and induced significant damage to more than 10,000 buildings in the L'Aquila region.ObjectivesThis observational retrospective study evaluated the prevalence and drug treatment of pain in the five weeks following the L'Aquila earthquake (April 6, 2009).Methods 958 triage documents were analysed for patients pain severity, pain type, and treatment efficacy.ResultsA third of pain patients reported pain with a prevalence of 34.6%. More than half of pain patients reported severe pain (58.8%). Analgesic agents were limited to available drugs: anti-inflammatory agents, paracetamol, and weak opioids. Reduction in verbal numerical pain scores within the first 24 hours after treatment was achieved with the medications at hand. Pain prevalence and characterization exhibited a biphasic pattern with acute pain syndromes owing to trauma occurring in the first 15 days after the earthquake; traumatic pain then decreased and re-surged at around week five, owing to rebuilding efforts. In the second through fourth week, reports of pain occurred mainly owing to relapses of chronic conditions.ConclusionsThis study indicates that pain is prevalent during natural disasters, may exhibit a discernible pattern over the weeks following the event, and current drug treatments in this region may be adequate for emergency situations.

Higher Incidence of Sleep Disturbance among Survivors with Musculoskeletal Pain after the Great East Japan Earthquake: A Prospective Study

“…Natural disasters cause musculoskeletal pain mainly associated with traumatic events in the acute phase (Angeletti et al 2012). However, its prevalence has been reported at high level even in the chronic phase (Yabuki et al 2015).…”

“…Furthermore, natural disasters changed working status (Angeletti et al 2014) and subjective economic hardship was associated with low back and shoulder pain after the GEJE (Hagiwara et al 2017b;Yabe et al 2017). Psychological distress under natural disasters was considered to affect peoples' perception of pain (Angeletti et al 2014), and a reduced pain threshold and elevated sympathetic nervous system activity were considered as candidate reasons (Angeletti et al 2012(Angeletti et al , 2014. Musculoskeletal pain after natural disasters disturbed activities of daily living of survivors (Hagiwara et al 2017a).…”

The Christchurch Earthquake: Crush Injury, Neuropathic Pain, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

“…It is known that the shortage of pain-relieving medications (opioid or nonopioid) in the first hours after the earthquake is related to availability and transport [6, 7]. Different forms of pain are under treated.…”

Association Between Sleep Disturbance and New-onset Subjective Shoulder Pain in Survivors of the Great East Japan Earthquake: A Prospective Cohort Study in Miyagi Prefecture

“…Multiple factors such as psychological disorders, physical inactivity, and functional disabilities affect chronic pain of survivors in the chronic phase. Such factors occur because of life-threatening stress and changes in living conditions, owing to the destruction of the home environment and the public healthcare systems of survivors (Angeletti et al 2012;Tomata et al 2015;Yabuki et al 2015). However, the precise mechanism mediating the effects of such factors has remained unsolved.…”

“…Most pain syndromes after earthquakes and other natural disasters are caused by traumatic events in the acute phase (Angeletti et al 2012). Multiple factors such as psychological disorders, physical inactivity, and functional disabilities affect chronic pain of survivors in the chronic phase.…”