Studies suggest that around 20% of adults in Europe experience chronic pain, which not only has a considerable impact on their quality of life but also imposes a substantial economic burden on society. More than one-third of these people feel that their pain is inadequately managed. A range of analgesic drugs is currently available, but recent guidelines recommend that NSAIDs and COX-2 inhibitors should be prescribed cautiously. Although the short-term efficacy of opioids is good, adverse events are common and doses are frequently limited by tolerability problems. There is a perceived need for improved pharmacological treatment options. Currently, many treatment decisions are based solely on pain intensity. However, chronic pain is multifactorial and this apaproach ignores the fact that different causative mechanisms may be involved. The presence of more than one causative mechanism means that chronic pain can seldom be controlled by a single agent. Therefore, combining drugs with different analgesic actions increases the probability of interrupting the pain signal, but is often associated with an increased risk of drug/drug interactions, low compliance and increased side effects. Tapentadol combines μ-opioid receptor agonism and noradrenaline reuptake inhibition in a single molecule, with both mechanisms contributing to its analgesic effects. Preclinical testing has shown that μ-opioid agonism is primarily responsible for analgesia in acute pain, whereas noradrenaline reuptake inhibition is more important in chronic pain. In clinical trials in patients with chronic pain, the efficacy of tapentadol was similar to that of oxycodone, but it produced significantly fewer gastrointestinal side-effects and treatment discontinuations. Pain relief remained stable throughout a 1-year safety study. Thus, tapentadol could possibly overcome some of the limitations of currently available analgesics for the treatment of chronic pain.
The results show the potential that could be made accessible by an early detection of back pain patients who bear a risk of pain becoming chronic, both in terms of quality-of-life as well as in financial terms.
The epidemic-like rise in chronic low back pain in western industrial nations is less an expression of a medical than a psychosocial phenomenon. Differentiation between acute, chronic or chronifying pain is of crucial importance for therapeutic procedures. Pain syndromes in the muscular-skeletal system tend to become chronic to a far larger extent than expected. More than 80 % of low back pain represents a functional pain syndrome and does not show any pathoanatomical correlate. Pain existing independently seems to be predestined by a somatic and psychosocial deconditioning syndrome. Those at risk of chronifying pain or those whose pain is already chronic should be given an interdisciplinary, multimodal therapeutic program. A pilot study was carried out in our clinic: multidisciplinary treatment was given to our patients (of which over 90 % belonged to stages II and III on the Gerbershagen scale) and the result was significant improvement in the measurements of pain intensity, sensoric and affective pain perception, their list of complaints, the common scale of depression and the pain disability index. Taking previously published studies into consideration, it is safe to say that a multidisciplinary, multimodal program of therapy even after stay in hospital results in considerable relief of pain and improvement in the ability to cope with the pain for patients with chronified pain syndromes in the muscular-skeletal system which are resistant to treatment on an outpatient basis.
Multimodal pain treatment programs are widely accepted as the medical treatment standard in the management of patients with chronic pain syndromes. The concepts and treatment strategies are based on the biopsychosocial model of pain and programs for early restoration of function. Although this concept is primarily implemented in the curative field, i.e. in hospitals for the treatment of patients with chronic pain diseases, modified programs based on the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) can now also be found in rehabilitation clinics. Despite the assumed similarities, significant differences in, for example the aims of the therapy and relevant structural and process variables have to be kept in mind when allocating patients to a program as provided by a hospital or a rehabilitation clinic. The aim of this article is to present the framework structures of both treatment levels with respect to the implementation of multimodal pain therapy programs and to elucidate the differential diagnostic approach to the indications.
In 2009 the diagnosis chronic pain disorder with somatic and psychological factors (F45.41) was integrated into the German version of the International Classification of Diseases, version 10 (ICD-10-GM). In 2010 Paul Nilges and Winfried Rief published operationalization criteria for this diagnosis. In the present publication the ad hoc commission on multimodal interdisciplinary pain therapy of the German Pain Society now presents a formula for a clear validation of these operationalization criteria of the ICD code F45.41.
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