About half of Americans struggle to regulate their pain and keep appointments with doctors.
And that can lead to increased health care costs and quality of life, according to a recent study published online Sept. 19 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Kyung-Yeon Lee, MD, from the department of general medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), and colleagues analyzed data from 137 study participants from 12 countries, aged 18 and older, who were followed for over 5 years and supplemented with 22 study participants, aged 17 and older, who were followed for 3 years.
The researchers, including one author fromHealth Care University of Korea in Seoul, Korea, analyzed data for 27 personality domains as well as 36 pain severity scales and 31 frequency scales. They then analyzed pain metformin use, weekly opioid use, daily pain usage, and subcutaneous pain using the abbreviated short form of the dihexaepidemic tool reported in the published study.
At baseline, broad stress scores, which are suggested by clinicians expecting to find pain in the primary care context, for pain severity significantly correlated with pain/manicure rates, while the pain metformin use significantly correlated with pain/medication use at baseline. Daily opioid use was not associated with patient pain and high patient pain scores at baseline.
The findings were limited by several factors including the lack of information on race, gender and potential impact of opioid prescribing, as well as differences in recording method, quality of the data and cost of analysis.
The study was funded in part by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke-R01-NIH, National Eye Institute, South Korea, and National Institute of Drug Abuse, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, United States of Korea.
The study, titled “Assessing levels of managing adequate pain and pain characteristics—a cross-national analysis”, was published online Sept. 19 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
