title: Chronic pain: which patients may a pain-management program help?
abstract: To ascertain whether chronic-pain patients who are likely to benefit from a pain-management program can be identified before treatment, we studied for differences discernible at the beginning of treatment a group who succeeded and did well at 1-year follow-up (n = 34) and a group who failed (n = 35). The two groups differed significantly (P less than 0.01) in regard to duration of pain, work time lost, number of operations, subjective pain level, and drug dependency. Deviations on the MMPI were greater in failures than in successes; but the differences were not statistically significant. A 7-item rating scale based on these data differentiated a favorable group (including 71% of the successes) from an unfavorable group (including 86% of the failures). This scale should be helpful in selection of candidates for a pain-management program, even though it needs further validation.
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008950:MMPI; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology; D059408:Pain Management