Anti-epileptics and anti-depressants for neuropathic pain: Lessons from Cochrane overviews and systematic reviews

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Phil Wiffen

University of Bath, UK

: Analg Resusc: Curr Res

Abstract

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Anti-epileptics and anti-depressants are widely used to manage a variety of neuropathic pain conditions. Using wellestablished evidence based medicine approach a resume will be given of the development of overviews to summarize systematic reviews and make information more accessible to practitioners.The session will discuss the randomized controlled trial literature and present the results of two major Cochrane overviews on these classes of medicines. These show that not all anti-epileptics or anti-depressants are equal and that some of the mainstays of neuropathic pain treatments such as carbamazepine are largely unsupported by good quality evidence. The session will end with a view of the flaws in many of the published randomized trials together with some suggestions for grading evidence in order to stimulate higher quality research into effectiveness.

Biography

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