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MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDayNews) -- Pain is a common problem for patients in hospitals and pain treatments are often inadequate, says a University of Chicago study in the Jan. 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The researchers analyzed data collected from 5,584 people admitted to the general medicine inpatient service at an urban academic medical center. The study found 59 percent of the patients had pain -- 28 percent reported severe pain, 19 percent moderate pain, and 12 percent mild pain.

People with complications arising from sickle cell disease were most likely to report significant pain (90 percent) while people with syncope (temporary loss of consciousness, or a "fainting" episode) were least likely to report significant pain (34 percent).

Characteristics significantly associated with an increase risk of pain included specific diagnoses, weight, being older than 65 years, being female and having an education level higher than high school.

The study found pain was reported by 28 percent of people without high-risk characteristics for pain. It also found that 82.2 percent of patients were satisfied with their pain treatment, 11.1 percent were somewhat satisfied, and 6.7 percent were dissatisfied.

"We found that patients hospitalized in a general medicine service carry a heavy pain burden," the study authors write.

"A large percentage of our study patients had experienced pain, and a significant percentage was dissatisfied with the pain management that they had received. Our data for pain prevalence and severity closely resembled those reported for populations thought to be at high risk for pain. While we identified several predictors of pain, we were unable to identify a population truly at low risk using these predictors," the authors write.

"Therefore, it may be important to think of all patients hospitalized in general medicine services as being at high risk for pain, just as we do for patients with cancer and for critically ill and postoperative patients."

More information

Here's where you can learn more about pain management.

(SOURCE: JAMA/Archives, news release, Jan. 26, 2004)

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