Medical & Clinical Research

Author(s): Marnin Joseph Romm, Kathryn Roach, Ira Fiebert, Mark D Bishop, Lawrence Patrick Cahalin

Objectives: Telehealth pain management has become instrumental in managing patents with chronic pain (CP) since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Little is known, however, about which patient’s best respond to these telehealth interventions. The primary aim of this study was to investigate patients’ demographic and clinical characteristics that predict the efficacy of telehealth Group-Based Pain Management Programs (GPMPs) based on change in various pain outcome measures from pre-to-post-intervention.

Methods: The research included five separate telehealth GPMP groups each consisting of patients from different countries with various musculoskeletal CP conditions. Each group met once a week for 3 hours via zoom software and ran over a course of 6 weeks in which CP self-management techniques were taught. Pain outcome measures were taken at baseline and after the final telehealth GPMP. Regression analyses as well as other statistical procedures were used to determine the predictive nature of the patient’s demographic and clinical variables.

Results: Baseline emotional wellbeing demonstrated statistically significant associations (p<0.05) with baseline outcome measures. The primary pain outcome measures including the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, the Pain Catastrophizing Scale-Total and the Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia, all showed large effect sizes; d=0.90, d=0.75 and d=0.77 respectively. Changes in the primary pain outcome measures` scores all showed statistically significant relationships (p<0.05) with their individual baseline scores.

Conclusion: Telehealth GPMPs have an important clinical role to play in the management of patients with CP. Understanding patients` clinical and demographic characteristics appears to be an important factor in predicting changes in pain manifestations.