Chronic nonmalignant pain at a mono-disciplinary pain clinic. Identifying the key patient groups for targeted health promotion - A cohort study.

Aims To identify and describe the most common category of patients in a newly established mono-disciplinary pain clinic, in order to plan, test, evaluate and implement targeted health promotion interventions. Methods The study was a register-based retrospective cohort study comprising data from the hospital registration system GS!open. Including chronic non-malignant pain patients in the period January 1st 2013 to December 31st 2014; analysing only patients who underwent a treatment trajectory by the mono-disciplinary pain clinic. Results The study population consisted of 300 men and 509 women, mean age 53.6 year. By descriptive statistics the three major patient groups was identified: (1) Long lasting/chronic non-malignant pain - comprising 52% of the cohort, representing 37% male, mean age 54.9 year, mainly labeled nonspecific back pain; (2) Other chronic pain- representing 15% of the cohort, comprising 45% male, mean age 56.0 year; (3) Reflex dystrophy - comprising 8% of the cohort, with 30% male, mean age 43.6 year. The clinic had 4.161 outpatient consultations in the period with an increase of 13.9% from 2013 to 2014; average consultation rate per individual was 5.2 for women both years; for men the average was 5.1 in 2013 and 4.9 in 2014. In addition, the pain clinic patients were referred from: hospital (89.3%); hospital waiting trajectory (1.7%); general practitioner (7.3%) and practitioner specialist (1.7%). Conclusions This register-based study revealed that patients with nonspecific back pain were the most frequent patient category treated in the mono-disciplinary pain clinic. This finding suggests that targeted health promotion intervention may advantageously be organized with focus on the large group of patients with chronic nonspecific back pain.