[Neuropathic pain in the elderly]. / La douleur neuropathique chez la personne âgée.

Neuropathic pain is characterized by a heavier intensity and a longer duration than in non-neuropathic chronic pain. Its frequency is estimated around 9% of the population aged 65 years and over. Diabetes, shingles, cancer, surgery, radiculopathies or stroke are frequent in elderly and may lead to neuropathic pain. It's treatment is a real challenge in elderly. Beside the difficulties of pain evaluation and choice of a therapeutic strategy, intercurrent diseases associated with aging and polymedication require a complex drug treatment. The leading role of cognition, emotion, physical activity for autonomy preservation, and the dynamic interaction between these domains in the old, oldest old and most fragile persons, imply that any pharmacological treatment must be integrated into a non-pharmacological approach. However, very few studies has been specifically devoted to neuropathic pain in elderly. Epidemiological studies and controlled clinical trials are necessary to optimize pain treatment and could result in polymodal therapeutic strategies, which until now only are evidence-based or intuitively developed.

[Adaptations of psychotropic drugs in patients aged 75 years and older in a departement of geriatric internal medecine: report of 100 cases]. / Adaptations des médicaments psychotropes chez les sujets âgés de 75 ans et plus dans un service de médecine interne gériatrique : à propos de 100 patients.

The elderly often with multiple diseases are particularly at risk from adverse drug reactions. Nearly half of iatrogenic drug in the elderly are preventable. Some medications such as psychotropic drugs are particularly involved in iatrogenic accidents. We wanted to know if the tools of the comprehensive geriatric assessment or other factors could influence the changes of psychotropic drugs in a geriatric departement. Our prospective study of four months in 100 patients aged 75 years and older hospitalized in the Geriatric Internal Medecine Departement of University Hospital of Nice investigated what were the clinical or biological reasons and tools used during changes of psychotropic drugs. We compared these changes according to the comprehensive geriatric assessment tools and we analyzed the changes based on lists of potentially inappropriate medications by Laroche et al. and from the instrument STOPP/START. The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) was the tool that has most influenced the changes in psychotropic including a tendency to increase and the introduction of anxiolytics when MMSE < 20 (p = 0.007) while neuroleptics instead arrested and decreased (p = 0.012). The comprehensive geriatric assessment has its place in decision support during the potentially iatrogenic prescriptions of drugs such as psychotropic and new tools such as STOPP/START can also be a help to the prescriber informed.

Validation of an acute pain-behavior scale for older persons with inability to communicate verbally: Algoplus.

To compensate for poor acute pain detection in elderly inpatients with inability to communicate verbally (ICV), the Doloplus Collective team devised the 5-item Algoplus behavior-assessment scale specifically aimed at quickly detecting acute pain in these individuals. Algoplus was developed in three successive phases, including expert opinions, caregivers interviews, patient video recordings and statistical procedures. Among the 1500 recorded primary pain behaviors, 48 were selected and clustered into a 5-item scale. This version was validated based on 349 old inpatients (204 with acute pain and 145 without) from different care settings and hospitals. Comparators were objective acute pain clinical situations, experts' clinical judgment on acute pain presence, and self-rating scales (Visual Analog Scale, Numeric Rating Scale and Verbal Descriptor Scale) for a communicative subsample (n=134). Algoplus showed good discriminant validity with adequate internal consistency (Kuder-Richardson-20, 0.712), excellent interrater reliability (intraclass coefficient, 0.812) and high sensitivity to change during specific pain situations and after starting pain management. Excellent correlations were observed between Algoplus and experts' clinical judgment, acute pain clinical situations or each comparator self-rating-pain score. For patients with acute pain conditions, a score ⩾2 out of 5 on the Algoplus scale was retained as the threshold for the presence of acute pain in elderly ICV inpatients, with 87% sensitivity and 80% specificity. In addition, the very brief rating time of ∼1min is particularly relevant in acute-care settings, where repetitive pain-monitoring is required.