The psychological aspects of burning mouth syndrome.

It should be emphasized that at the present stage there is no consensus achieved regarding the etiopathogenesis of BMS. Almost all researchers point to lots of factors, simultaneously participating in genesis and development of BMS and at the same time most of them agreed on one - psychological factors play a crucial role in formation and maintenance of painful sensations. The aim of the study was the identification of psychological or psychiatric deviations (changes) among the patients with BMS to perform an adequate differentiated therapy. Clinico-psychological examination (dentist, neurologist, psychiatrist) was carried out in 39 patients from 46 to 70 years of age. Among them women - 36 and men - 3. To identify clinical types of BMS a classification of P.J. Lamey (1996) was used and as a result, depression, insomnia, cancerophobia, severe neurologic disorders, phobic syndrome were revealed. Three main categories - a chronic somatoform dysfunction (23 cases), chronic vegetative disorders (8), and chronic pain phenomenon (12) were identified. Only in one case was revealed a paranoid syndrome. Alongside with the well-known scheme of treatment (antidepressants, anticonvulsants, or neuroleptics) Psychotherapy was conducted, while EEG-feed back (Biofeed back, Neurofeed back) method was used for the first time. A number of important decisions were made the most important of which are the following: BMS - must be regarded as a psychosomatic problem rather than a psychiatric disorder. In addition to psychotherapy, using of EEG - feedback method greatly improved patients' condition and in 4 cases BMS clinical manifestations were evened-out completely.

Pontine mass presenting as anxiety, obsessions, and severe eating problems: a case report.

Psychiatric symptoms are rarely reported as presenting symptoms in brainstem gliomas in children, with anxiety being the most common one. An 8-year-old girl patient had loss of appetite, weight loss, and difficulty in swallowing severe enough to warrant parenteral nutrition and hospitalization. Psychiatric examination revealed ego-dystonic obsessions related with choking and compulsory religious rituals. Symptoms partially responded to psychotropic treatment. However, because of unremitting hiccups and left-sided weakness, brain imaging was conducted, and magnetic resonance imaging revealed a diffuse pontine mass. The possible explanations for the relationship between the pontine mass and the psychiatric symptoms are discussed.

Level of obsessionality among neurosurgical patients with a primary brain tumor.

Obsessive-compulsive symptoms have been associated with different types of damages or dysfunctions in the brain. However, the accumulated evidence on obsessive-compulsive symptoms among patients with a primary brain tumor is so far based on case reports only. The study population consisted of 59 neurosurgical patients with a primary brain tumor. One preoperative and two postoperative assessments for the level of obsessionality were done with the Crown-Crisp Experiential Index (CCEI)-instrument. Mean obsessionality scores increased significantly among the patients with a tumor in the left anterior region of the brain measured at 3 months after operation, especially in women, compared to the patients with a tumor in other regions of the brain. The level of obsessionality seemed to increase immediately after operation among patients with a primary tumor left anteriorly in the brain. This increase may be linked with the lesion caused by the tumor itself or the neurosurgical operation.

Hypervigilance and attentional fixedness in chronic musculoskeletal pain: consistency of findings across modified stroop and dot-probe tasks.

UNLABELLED: Results from modified Stroop and dot-probe tasks have provided mixed evidence regarding attentional biases for sensory and affect pain stimuli in chronic pain patients. No studies have compared the same groups of chronic pain and healthy control participants on both tasks. We tested 36 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain and 29 healthy control subjects on the modified Stroop and dot-probe tasks. Stimuli comprised affect pain, sensory pain, physical catastrophe, and neutral words. There was no evidence to suggest differential processing of threat cues by patients and control subjects on the modified Stroop task. All participants did, however, show differential processing of affect pain words. This was evident on both masked and unmasked presentation formats. There were no significant interactions between clinical status and threat word type observed for any of the indices of selective attention derived from the dot-probe task, but all participants had difficulty disengaging attention from affective pain and health catastrophe words. Findings were not influenced by individual differences in mood, anxiety, or fear of pain. Correlational analyses of the standard (unmasked) Stroop interference index and dot-probe indices of selective attention revealed a consistent lack of significant association, suggesting that the 2 tasks might be measuring different phenomena. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that chronic pain patients and healthy control participants do not differ in the way they attend to threatening linguistic stimuli. PERSPECTIVE: Some patients with chronic pain might have trouble paying attention to anything other than the affective components of pain and associated catastrophic health consequences. Interventions that specifically target this attentional fixedness might facilitate shifting attention to other targets and thereby reduce pain-specific anxiety and fear.

[Borderline mental disorders in patients with prostate cancer]. / Pogranichnye psikhicheskie rasstroistva u bol'hykh rakom predstatel'noi zhelezy.

Sixty five patients, aged 48-87, with prostate cancer at different stages were studied. Borderline mental disorders were found in all the patients. In the majority of them, affective disorders in the form of anxiety-depressive (52.3%) and astheno-depressive (24.6%) syndromes were observed. Astheno-hypochondriacal and dysphoric syndromes were detected less frequently (in 15.4% and 7.7% of the cases, respectively).