analgesic-dosing-behaviours-in-patients-with-chronic-non-cancer-pain-does-it-affect-the-pain-control

Abstract

Chronic pain has a significant impact on sufferers' quality of life. Furthermore, treatment inadequacies are often reported in the literatures. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of the different dosing behaviors in analgesics use in chronic, non-cancer pain and their correlation to pain control. This is a cross-sectional study and a convenience sampling method was applied. Brief Pain Inventory-Short Form and Pain Management Index was computed to assess pain control. Statistical analysis was performed with Pearson chi-square test and alpha value was set at 0.05. A total of 127 patients were analyzed. 70.9% of the patients reported inadequate pain control with their prescribed analgesic(s). 88.2% patients only took oral analgesics whenever they felt the pain while 11.8% patients took around-the-clock despite the absence of pain. Among them, 11.8-34.7% of patients did not follow their prescriber's instruction for oral and topical analgesic use respectively. However, no statistically significant result was found between the dosing behaviors and pain control (p>0.95). It was also reported that 98% of patients were not aware of the maximum daily dose of their prescribed analgesic(s). The prevalence of 'as needed' dosing is higher than around-the-clock dosing in the management of chronic, non-cancer pain, with deviation from the prescribed instructions between 11.8-34.7%. However, those differences were not significantly associated with the pain control.