A Randomized Treatment Study to Compare the Efficacy of Repeated Nerve Blocks with Cognitive Therapy for Control of Chronic Head and Neck Pain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This prospective study compared the efficacy of two antinociceptive modalities: nerve blocks and cognitive therapy. A consecutive series of patients receiving nerve block therapy was invited to take part in a six-week randomized comparison of nerve blocks and cognitive therapy. Sixty-eight of 102 patients approached by telephone agreed to participate. Patients attended eight weekly treatment sessions. Baseline and seven weekly sets of values were recorded. The principal measure of outcome was the Pain on a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). The secondary measures were the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the Activities of Daily Living as measured on the Primary Care Cooperative Information Project/World Organization of National Colleges, Academies (COOP-WONCA) scale. Within the first week, one patient of 34 in the nerve block group withdrew and 12 of 34 in the cognitive therapy group withdrew from the study. After seven weeks, 33 patients in the nerve block group remained in the trial, but only 21 patients completed the questionnaires. Four of 22 patients in the cognitive therapy group completed the trial and their questionnaires. Mean VAS scores in the nerve block group dropped slightly during treatment. Mean VAS scores in the cognitive therapy group rose during the trial. However, the mean VAS score of the remaining four in the last week was below the initial group mean. Patients who had been receiving nerve blocks proved willing to remain in the study if allocated to the nerve block group and unwilling to remain in the cognitive therapy group while foregoing their accustomed treatment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".