Sex Differences in Reported Pain Across 11,000 Patients Captured in Electronic Medical Records

Abstract

Clinically recorded pain scores are abundant in patient health records but are rarely used in research. The use of this information could help improve clinical outcomes. For example, a recent report by the Institute of Medicine stated that ineffective use of clinical information contributes to under-treatment of patient subpopulations — especially women. This study used diagnosis-associated pain scores from a large hospital database to document sex differences in reported pain. We used de-identified electronic medical records from Stanford Hospital and Clinics for more than 72,000 patients. Each record contained at least one disease-associated pain score. We found over 160,000 pain scores in more than 250 primary diagnoses, and analyzed differences in disease-specific pain reported by men and women. After filtering for diagnoses with minimum encounter numbers, we found diagnosis-specific sex differences in reported pain. The most significant differences occurred in patients with disorders of the musculoskeletal, circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems, followed by infectious diseases, and injury and poisoning. We also discovered sex-specific differences in pain intensity in previously unreported diseases, including disorders of the cervical region, and acute sinusitis (p = 0.01, 0.017, respectively). Pain scores were collected during hospital encounters. No information about the use of pre-encounter over-the-counter medications was available. To our knowledge, this is the largest data-driven study documenting sex differences of disease-associated pain. It highlights the utility of EMR data to corroborate and expand on results of smaller clinical studies. Our findings emphasize the need for future research examining the mechanisms underlying differences in pain.

Sex differences in pain and pain inhibition: multiple explanations of a controversial phenomenon

“…Study Study review of 11,000 electronic medical records of men and women with the same diagnosis 11 . However, the real test of the hypothesis that pain sensitivity itself is higher in women requires controlled laboratory experimentation.…”

Symptoms and function in patients with articular cartilage lesions in 1,000 knee arthroscopies

“…Further, epidemiological and clinical studies conclude that women generally experience more pain and more negative responses to pain [29][30][31]. Both biological (including genetic and hormonal factors) and psychosocial explanations for the difference have been offered [7,17,28,29].…”

Relation between quality of life and spirituality in chronic renal patients who conduct hemodialysis

“…Para 21 das 22 doenças com uma comparação significativa, os pesquisadores descobriram que as mulheres relatavam níveis maiores de dor que os dos homens. 18 Neste estudo, 69,78% dos entrevistados apresentaram limitação por aspecto físico, relatados durante a aplicação do questionário SF-36. Os hábitos de vida das pessoas que realizam hemodiálise podem ser afetados pelo seu comprometimento físico.…”