Van Den Kerkhof Elizabeth G, Hopman Wilma M, Towheed Tanveer E, Anastassiades Tassos P, Goldstein David H
Queen's University, Kingston General Hospital, Kingston, Canada.
Pain Res Manag. 2003 Fall;8(3):157-63. doi: 10.1155/2003/493047.
Pain is an important public health problem in Canada. International estimates of general population pain prevalence range from 2% to 46%.
The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the potentially misleading use of overall prevalence estimates in the pain literature and to use two Canadian population-based surveys to assess the impact of sampling and measurement on prevalence.
Two of the secondary data sets used were the 1996/97 National Population and Health Survey (NPHS) and the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (CaMos). This paper is based on the assessment of chronic pain in the NPHS, and the assessment of short term pain using the Medical Outcomes Trust's 36-item health survey and the Health Utilities Index, both collected by CaMos. Data are presented as frequencies and percentages overall and stratified by age and sex. CaMos prevalence estimates were age- and sex-standardized to the NPHS population.
The overall prevalence of pain was 39% for one-week pain, 66% for four-week pain and 15% for chronic pain. Women were more likely to report pain than men and the prevalence of pain increased with age.
This study yields useful information about the self-reported responses to a variety of questions assessing pain in the general population. Responses to the different questions likely represent different categories of pain, such as short term versus chronic pain, which in turn may have different epidemiological risk factors and profiles. Longitudinal studies of the epidemiology, predictors and natural history of chronic pain are urgently needed in the Canadian population.
疼痛是加拿大一个重要的公共卫生问题。国际上对普通人群疼痛患病率的估计范围为2%至46%。
本文旨在批判性地审视疼痛文献中总体患病率估计可能存在的误导性用法，并利用两项基于加拿大人群的调查来评估抽样和测量对患病率的影响。
所使用的两个二手数据集分别是1996/97年全国人口与健康调查（NPHS）和加拿大多中心骨质疏松症研究（CaMos）。本文基于对NPHS中慢性疼痛的评估，以及对CaMos收集的使用医学结果信托基金的36项健康调查和健康效用指数进行的短期疼痛评估。数据以频率和百分比的形式呈现，总体上以及按年龄和性别分层呈现。CaMos的患病率估计按年龄和性别标准化为NPHS人群的情况。
一周疼痛的总体患病率为39%，四周疼痛为66%，慢性疼痛为15%。女性比男性更有可能报告疼痛，且疼痛患病率随年龄增加而上升。
本研究得出了关于普通人群对各种评估疼痛问题的自我报告反应的有用信息。对不同问题的回答可能代表不同类型的疼痛，如短期疼痛与慢性疼痛，而这反过来可能具有不同的流行病学危险因素和特征。加拿大人群迫切需要对慢性疼痛的流行病学、预测因素和自然史进行纵向研究。
