Some interesting facts about pain

Here are some really interesting facts about pain provided by Dr. John Clark of the Calgary Health Region Chronic Pain Centre.

Pain is one of Canada’s most serious health problems. Pain impacts emotional, physical and psycho-social well being of individuals/ families; our health care system and our economy.
People with severe chronic pain are 4 times more likely to be hospitalized, are 6 times more likely to suffer from clinical depression, and require 4 times the number of medical consultations than people without pain. Inadequately controlled pain is a patient safety issue associated with delayed healing; and increases in length of stay, disability and suffering (CCHSA, 2003). Statistics Canada (2005) estimates a cost of $10,000 to $14,000 per year per patient to treat chronic pain and $12.5 billion in lost productivity.

Despite known best practices that adequately address pain, pain remains under-treated in three out of four patients (Brookoff, D.,2001; Chapman, 2004). Approximately, 26% of adult Calgarians (200,000) experience chronic pain, of which 3% (30,000) suffer severe disabling pain (CPHS, 2001). Due to the aging population, the number of people in Calgary and Alberta with moderate or severe chronic pain is projected to increase by approximately 20% over the next 10 years.

The Canadian Pain Society Waitlist Task Force recently concluded that there is deterioration in health related quality of life and psychological well if patients wait for 6 months or more for treatment of chronic pain and that measures should be taken to ensure that wait times for chronic pain treatment should be no longer than 6 months.