Patients’& Health Professionals’ views on post-surgical pain relief
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Pain relief and brief psychological techniques with hip and knee surgery: a qualitative interview of patients’ and orthopaedic Health Professionals’ views.
IRAS ID
196581
Contact name
Tahani Alsanaani
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
the University of Plymouth
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 16 days
Research summary
Acute postoperative pain management can still to be found to be unmanaged adequately. In the United States, 80% of the 73 million patients who undergo surgical procedures each year experiences acute postoperative pain, and about 20% of them experience severe pain (Hutchison. 2007). Between 1993 and 2012 patients still experienced high levels of pain, despite the improvements in pharmacological techniques to relieve pain after surgery (Correll, et al. 2014). The evidence suggests that unrelieved post-surgical pain might cause some significant psychological and physiological consequences (Sinatra. 2010). A number of epidemiological studies have considered that unmanaged acute post-operative pain is one of the significant predictors of chronic pain incidence (e.g. Visser. 2004). Moreover, patients’ health-related quality of life (Strassels, et al. 2004), and health care costs will be affected too (Joshi and Ogunnaike. 2005).\nRecent research has highlighted several factors that contributed in the importance of psychological interventions to relieve post-surgical pain; these factors include mechanisms of pain modulations and the effect of placebo treatment; patients’ fears and misinformation about treatment (Cogan, et al. 2014); and physicians’ concerns and prescribing opiates (Bhamb, et al. 2006). In addition, there are some issues related to the pharmacological treatment such as the side effects of medications and the impact of long-term use of opioids (Baldini, Korff & Lin. 2012; Højsted, et al. 2013) which might outweigh the efficacy of postoperative pain management in both short and long term patients’ healthcare pathways.\nThe American Pain Society has recommended the approach that combined pharmacological treatments and different complementary therapies e.g. psychological therapy to balance the effect of pain medication and gain better relief of pain. However, recent guidelines (Chou, et al.2016) has not revealed strong recommendations to support the implementation of psychological therapies, despite the evidence of the effectiveness of these interventions in different clinical trials. Such these recommendations would affect the implementation of these techniques in general practices as cost-effective treatment with potential less side effects as compared to other pharmacological treatments.\nThus, this study will interview patients and orthopaedic clinicians to investigate the lived experience of patients as well as the work experience of orthopaedic clinicians to answer the following questions, is the current protocol of post-operative pain relief effective? What sort of barriers are there to implement psychological techniques in clinical practices, is it for example; the patients’ acceptance or the orthopaedic clinicians’ attitudes?
REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/NW/0855
Date of REC Opinion
20 Dec 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion