Multidisciplinary treatment of chronic pain at the Northwest Pain Center.

The Northwest Pain Center is a three-week multidisciplinary day care pain management program which has been operating since 1972. Experience shows that pain problems result in excessive use of medical resources, inappropriate medication use, and possibly unnecessary surgeries. Significant depression and family disruption are common. In spite of powerful incentives that maintain pain behavior, most important being the compensation and disability systems, more than 70 percent of patients maintain objective physical gains resulting from pain center treatment. Studies attempting to differentiate long-term successes from long-term failures provide implications for treatment and evaluation strategies. Areas of need are identified in public and professional education, and necessary future research.