Ethnocultural and Sex Characteristics of Patients Attending a Tertiary Care Pain Clinic in Toronto, Ontario

Abstract

The implications of the study and the importance of sex and ethnicity in terms of presentation to Canadian pain clinics are discussed. Future well-designed studies are needed to shed light on the role of both patients' and physicians' ethnicity and sex in pain perception and expression, decision-making regarding pain treatments and acceptance of pain treatments.

Pain Characteristics and Demographics of Patients Attending a University‐Affiliated Pain Clinic in Toronto, Ontario

“…three-quarters of these patients had associated psychological or psychiatric factors (similar to the general CPP population). Interestingly, FBSS was much more prevalent in Canadianborn than foreign-born men (10). Diffuse (or total) body pain, in the absence of specific detectable pathology, was present in 24 men and 88 women, corresponding to 5.9% and 13.7% of the total male and female CPP populations, respectively.…”

“…The remainder were born outside Canada, primarily in southern Europe, the United Kingdom, eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and south-central Asia (primarily India and Pakistan). Ethnocultural data are presented and discussed in detail in the companion paper (10).…”

The Canadian STOP-PAIN Project

“…Similar results were found in primary care settings [35][36][37][38] and multidisciplinary pain treatment facilities (MPTFs). [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] Patients referred to these types of facilities were found to be predominantly women, and they presented pain in a higher number of body regions than men.…”

Characteristics of Chronic Noncancer Pain Patients Assessed with the Opioid Risk Tool in a Canadian Tertiary Care Pain Clinic

“…Diagnostic classification was based on an empirically derived system that was adapted from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM‐IV‐TR) [13,14] and modified by the Comprehensive Pain Program, particularly in regard to describing in detail psychological factors. This system has been used in several publications from our center [5,15,16]. The CPP uses three diagnostic groups based on a standardized approach.…”

“…Rather, such a diagnosis requires a combination of detailed clinical information by history and physical examination, absence of positive biomedical investigations, and behavioral observations, including but not limited to degree of disability or pain severity and its concordance with clinical findings and investigations. It should be noted that the term “psychological factors” in our diagnostic classification system encompasses a wide spectrum not only of formal psychiatric conditions but multiple other factors as described in previous publications [5,15,16].…”