Abstract
Background and Objectives.
Pain treatments and their efficacy have been studied extensively. Yet surprisingly little is known about the types of treatments, and combinations of treatments, that community-dwelling adults use to manage pain, as well as how treatment types are associated with individual characteristics and national-level context. To fill this gap, we evaluated self-reported pain treatment types among community-dwelling adults in the U.S. and Canada. We also assessed how treatment types correlate with individuals' pain levels, sociodemographic characteristics, and country of residence, and identified unique clusters of adults in terms of treatment combinations.
Methods.
We used the 2020 “Recovery and Resilience” U.S.-Canada general online survey with 2,041 U.S. and 2,072 Canadian community-dwelling adults. Respondents selected up to ten pain treatment options including medication, physical therapy, exercise, etc., and an open-ended item was available for self-report of any additional treatments. Data were analyzed using descriptive, regression-based, and latent class analyses (LCA).
Results.
OTC medication was reported most frequently (by 55% of respondents, 95% CI 53-56%), followed by “just living with pain” (41%, 95%CI 40-43%) and exercise (40%, 95%CI 38-41%). The modal response (29%) to the open-ended item was cannabis use. Pain was the most salient correlate, predicting a greater frequency of all pain treatments. Country differences were generally small; a notable exception was alcohol use, which was reported twice as often among U.S. versus Canadian adults. Individuals grouped into five distinct clusters: two groups relied predominantly on medication (prescription or OTC), another favored exercise and other self-care approaches, one included adults "just living with" pain, and the cluster with the highest pain levels employed all modalities heavily. Discussion and Implications. Our findings provide new insights into recent pain treatment strategies among North American adults and identify population subgroups with potentially unmet need for more adaptive and effective pain management.
Pain treatments and their efficacy have been studied extensively. Yet surprisingly little is known about the types of treatments, and combinations of treatments, that community-dwelling adults use to manage pain, as well as how treatment types are associated with individual characteristics and national-level context. To fill this gap, we evaluated self-reported pain treatment types among community-dwelling adults in the U.S. and Canada. We also assessed how treatment types correlate with individuals' pain levels, sociodemographic characteristics, and country of residence, and identified unique clusters of adults in terms of treatment combinations.
Methods.
We used the 2020 “Recovery and Resilience” U.S.-Canada general online survey with 2,041 U.S. and 2,072 Canadian community-dwelling adults. Respondents selected up to ten pain treatment options including medication, physical therapy, exercise, etc., and an open-ended item was available for self-report of any additional treatments. Data were analyzed using descriptive, regression-based, and latent class analyses (LCA).
Results.
OTC medication was reported most frequently (by 55% of respondents, 95% CI 53-56%), followed by “just living with pain” (41%, 95%CI 40-43%) and exercise (40%, 95%CI 38-41%). The modal response (29%) to the open-ended item was cannabis use. Pain was the most salient correlate, predicting a greater frequency of all pain treatments. Country differences were generally small; a notable exception was alcohol use, which was reported twice as often among U.S. versus Canadian adults. Individuals grouped into five distinct clusters: two groups relied predominantly on medication (prescription or OTC), another favored exercise and other self-care approaches, one included adults "just living with" pain, and the cluster with the highest pain levels employed all modalities heavily. Discussion and Implications. Our findings provide new insights into recent pain treatment strategies among North American adults and identify population subgroups with potentially unmet need for more adaptive and effective pain management.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | igad103 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Innovation in aging |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| Early online date | 16 Sept 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 12 Dec 2023 |
Bibliographical note
FundingResearch reported in this analysis was supported by a Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant, and by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01AG065351. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of SSHRC or the National Institutes of Health.
Keywords
- pain
- social factors
- epidemiology
- demography
- pain treatment
- pain management
Access to Document
- Zajacova_etal_IA_Self_Reported_Pain_VoR
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com