Are Functional Limitations Predictive of Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by Chronic Pain Patients?
Abstract
Chronic pain is an escalating problem in the United States, with a prevalence
of over 100 million people at an annual cost of $560 – 635 billion per year in medical
costs and lost productivity. Some of the consequences of chronic pain are functional
limitations, limitations in activities of daily living, and emotional limitations that
present as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Many chronic pain patients
turn to complementary and alternative medical techniques due to dissatisfaction with
conventional medical care, despite the inconsistent results of clinical trials on these
techniques. While some health-related and demographic predictors for use of
complementary and alternative techniques are known, it is not known if the level of
limitations can help predict the use of complementary and alternative techniques in
chronic pain patients.
The 2012 National Health Interview Survey had detailed questions asking
about chronic pain conditions, functional limitations, limitations in activities of daily
living, emotional limitations, and the use of a wide variety of complementary and
alternative medicine techniques. This study tested whether limitations in activities of
daily living, emotional limitations, and the number or type of functional limitations
was predictive of the use of complementary and alternative medicine. This
knowledge could be of use in designing future clinical trials of these techniques, in
the hope of obtaining more consistent results.
This study found that while the number or type of functional and emotional
limitations was not a significant predictor of using complementary and alternative
medicine, these limitations did significantly interact with the health-related and
demographic predictors in the model. Further exploration of these interactions will
be necessary to determine if they could be helpful in designing future clinical trials
for complementary and alternative medical techniques.
Table of Contents
Introduction -- Review of literature -- Methodology -- results -- Discussion -- Appendix A. Institutional Review Boars approval -- Appendix B. Questions used from 2012 NHIS -- Appendix C. Supplementary table
Degree
M.S.