Presented at the 2013 AAPM Annual Meeting « Back

Pain Catastrophizing in Outpatient Chronic Pain Patients: A Preliminary Observation

May L. Chin, MD, chinm@gwu.edu¹, Sible B. Antony, BS¹, Karen Slocum, MD MPH¹, Stephen C. Swank, BA¹, (1) The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, D.C.

Introduction: An individual’s pain experience consists of many emotional determinants, one of which includes pain catastrophizing. Pain catastrophizing is an exaggerated, negative cognitive sentiment toward an actual or anticipated painful experience. Age, duration of pain, and knowledge of cause may play a role in pain catastrophizing since emotions toward pain may change throughout one’s life. Methods: Chronic pain patients are routinely asked questions about their pain and the impact of pain on daily life during their outpatient pain clinic visit. Their responses to these questions on chronic pain were gauged on a Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) completed during the patient interview. The PCS total scores were compared with age, pain intensity, duration of pain, and knowledge of cause for pain. Results: Of the 21 chronic pain patients interviewed, there were 15 females and 6 males. The PCS total score was found to be higher in younger adults than in older adults with a Pearson correlation coefficient of -0.43. Pain intensity and knowledge of causality were found to have correlation coefficient of 0.38 and -0.39, respectively when compared with the PCS total score. The PCS total score was found to have poor correlation (0.13) with duration of pain. Conclusions: In this survey completed by a small number of patients, increased age and knowledge of causality for pain appear to be associated with less pain catastrophizing. Longitudinal studies with a larger sample size may help further determine the impact of these factors on pain catastrophizing. References: 1) Sullivan MJL, Bishop SR. The Pain Catastrophizing Scale: Development and validation. Psychological Assessment. 1995; 7(4):524-532. 2) Ruscheweyh R, Nees F, Marziniak M, et al. Pain catastrophizing and pain-related emotions: Influence of age and type of pain. Clinical Pain. 2011; 27(7):578-586.

Funding: None