Chronic pain: Which patients may a pain-management program help?

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 < 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.