What Causes Pain To Become Chronic?

New study November 2020 that looked at 375 women coming to an inner city emergency department for acute pain.  They followed these people for 3 months. 162 people still had pain at the end of 3 months while the others recovered. What they found was: “The no recovery group reported significantly greater PTSD symptoms, anger, sleep disturbance, and lower social support at the initial visit than both the early recovery and delayed recovery groups.”

These issues are predisposing risk factors for pain transitioning from acute to chronic pain. These findings mirror the work I do with patients to address these issues, as they are the underlying drivers of chronic pain, not the injury itself.

 

https://journals.lww.com/pain/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2020&issue=11000&article=00009&type=Fulltext