You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Short cuts
Articles of interest in other scholarly journals
  1. Jason Boland
  1. Senior Lecturer And Honorary Consultant In Palliative Medicine, Hull York Medical School, University Of Hull, UK
  1. Palliative Medicine, Hull York Medical School, University of Hull, Hull, UK

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2013-000478

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Gabapentin for refractory chronic cough: a double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised trial

    ▸ Ryan NM, Birring SS, Gibson PG. Lancet 2012; 380: 1583– 9.OpenUrlCrossRefPubMedWeb of Science

    This study is the first double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised controlled trial to investigate gabapentin for the treatment of refractory chronic cough. In it, 62 adults with refractory chronic cough of over 2 months, who did not have active respiratory disease, were randomised to take either gabapentin (titrated up to 600 mg three times a day) or placebo for 10 weeks. Compared with placebo, gabapentin improved cough-specific quality of life (as measured by the Leicester cough questionnaire score) within 4 weeks of commencement. This improvement was maintained during the study period, but not sustained after cessation of gabapentin. Ten patients (31%) had side effects with gabapentin (most commonly nausea and fatigue) and three patients (10%) had side effects with placebo. This study concluded that the treatment of refractory chronic cough with gabapentin is effective and well tolerated, suggesting that central reflex sensitisation is an important mechanism.

    Hydration in advanced cancer: can bioelectrical impedance analysis improve the evidence base? A systematic review of the literature

    ▸ Nwosu AC, Mayland CR, Mason SR, et al. J Pain Symptom Manage, Published Online First: 27 Nov 2012. doi: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2012.08.018.

    This systematic review evaluated the evidence for methods of hydration assessment, including bioelectrical impedance analysis to assess hydration in advanced cancer. The review included 15 studies. The findings from these studies show that clinical examination and biochemical tests are often used to assess hydration; however, limitations exist with these and in patients with advanced cancer. Furthermore, there is not always consensus for the symptoms associated with dehydration in cancer. Although there are limitations with using bioelectrical impedance alone to assess hydration in advanced cancer (due to reduced intracellular water making inaccurate calculations from equations based on healthy people), analysis of the raw bioelectrical impedance measurements using vector analysis may have a role as a hydration assessment tool in patients …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.