Intractable facial pain and illness behaviour.

Management of intractable facial pain (IFP) patients is time consuming and potentially frustrating. Earlier identification of IFP patients may be helped by considering such cases in terms of their illness behaviour rather than a large rang of other diagnostic labels. A group of 24 IFP patients, with diagnoses including temporomandibular joint dysfunction pain, atypical facial pain and facial neuralgia, completed a questionnaire designed to measure illness behaviour. Compared to a control group of patients with minor odontogenic pain, IFP patients were more somatically preoccupied, could not accept reassurance from a doctor as easily, and were less likely to acknowledge psychological aspects of illness. These attitudes, similar to those reported by other intractable pain patients, are unlikely to be related to degree of organic pathology or chronicity of pain. Use of a discriminant function resulted in three-quarters of the total sample being correctly separated into the two clinical groups on the basis of their IBQ scores.