Highlights
- •More than a half of chronic pain patients are not treated at admission.
- •Almost a half of chronic pain patients are still not treated at discharge.
- •Treated chronic patients do not decrease significantly their pain intensity.
- •It is a needed a greater attention to the management of chronic pain in elderly.
Abstract
Background
Chronic pain is a frequent characteristic of elderly people and represents an actual
and still poorly debated topic.
Objective
We investigated pain prevalence and intensity, and its pharmacological therapy in
elderly patients hospitalized in 101 internal medicine wards.
Methods
Taking advantage of the “REgistro POliterapie Società Italiana Medicina Interna” (REPOSI),
we collected 2535 patients of whom almost a quarter was older than 85 years old. Among
them, 582 patients were affected by pain (either chronic or acute) and 296 were diagnosed
with chronic pain.
Results
Patients with pain showed worse cognitive status, higher depression and comorbidities,
and a longer duration of hospital stay compared to those without pain (all p < .0366). Patients with chronic pain revealed lower level of independency in their
daily life, worse cognitive status and higher level of depression compared to acute
pain patients (all p < .0156). Moreover, most of them were not treated for pain at admission (73.4%) and
half of them was not treated with any analgesic drug at discharge (50.5%). This difference
affected also the reported levels of pain intensity. Patients who received analgesics
at both admission and discharge remained stable (p = .172). Conversely, those not treated at admission who received an analgesic treatment
during the hospital stay decreased their perceived pain (p < .0001).
Conclusions
Our results show the need to focus more attention on the pharmacological treatment
of chronic pain, especially in hospitalized elderly patients, in order to support
them and facilitate their daily life after hospital discharge.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 28, 2018
Accepted:
May 23,
2018
Received in revised form:
May 10,
2018
Received:
February 16,
2018
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
