Association Between Health-Related Perceptions and Treatment Outcomes in an Interdisciplinary Pain Management Program

BACKGROUND: Adherence to treatment recommendations, specifically chronic pain treatment, is a particular area of importance in the elderly. It has been suggested that patient beliefs/perceptions play a role in treatment outcome, and the current study seeks to further explore this relationship in order to determine the extent to which health-related beliefs and perceptions effect treatment outcome.
SUBJECTS: The study consisted of a total of 103 patients, ages 20-82, who were treated at the Eugene McDermott Center for Pain Management at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center over the past two years. METHOD: Initial and discharge responses to Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) items were collected. Select measures, such as the PMQ (Pain Medication Questionnaire), BIPQ (Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire), PROMIS Global Health, Composite Pain Rating, and other PROMIS measures were analyzed via SPSS. RESULTS: Strong correlations were found between Global Health and outcomes, specifically initial Global Health and initial outcome responses. Strong correlations were also found between initial BIPQ and initial outcome measure scores. DISCUSSION: The results supported the hypotheses and showed that as health-related perceptions change, outcome measures can also change accordingly with the progression of treatment.