According to the National Center for Health Statistics, more than one-quarter of Americans (26%) age 20 years and over - or, an estimated 76.5 million Americans - reports that they have had a problem with pain. Studies from the Pain Management Research Institute reveal an annual cost of $1.85 billion per 1 million people. The concept that chronic pain is a disease in its own right is leading to new specific treatments aimed at physical, psychological, and environmental components of this major disease, including genetic predisposition, according to a world renowned pain medicine expert. Michael J Cousins, professor and director of the Pain Management Research Institute at the University of Sydney, Royal North Shore Hospital, in Australia, presented the Decade of Pain plenary session on February 14, 2008, at the 24th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, Florida. “Chronic pain is different from acute pain,” explained Dr. Cousins. “If pain persists despite reasonable treatment from a primary care physician and other specialists, the advice of a pain medicine specialist should be sought. The earlier such help is obtained the greater the chance of returning to a reasonable range of life activities. In the near future, diagnosis and treatment of persistent pain will be markedly different,” Dr. Cousins stated. “Drugs such as morphine that provide only symptomatic relief will be replaced by or supplemented with a new generation of therapies targeted at the disease process.”

WHAT THE STUDY MAY MEAN TO YOU: The question of whether chronic pain should be considered a distinct disease is debatable. However, as pointed out by Dr. Cousins, new and better medications will require greater sophistication on the part of health care providers that can only be handled by specialists. It will be interesting to see how chronic pain is regarded in the coming years: a separate disease entity or a byproduct of other conditions? What do you think?