Australians keep suffering from chronic back pain

Chronic pain is a significant public health problem in Australia. Recent figures and surveys show that almost one fifth of the Australian community is affected by chronic pain. In older age groups the rates are even higher. Chronic pain has the potential to impact on your daily life, cause mental stress and increase your need for disability and health services. This article provides an overview of this common problem for Australians.

Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional feeling caused by real or potential tissue damage. Chronic pain refers to pain that lasts longer than a certain period of time, often meaning pain that lasts for several months or beyond an acute injury or event.

A high proportion of chronic pain is caused by nerve problems, which is termed neuropathic pain. Examples of neuropathic pain include phantom limb pain experienced by amputees, painful diabetic pain, post herpetic pain and sciatic pain. Patients with neuropathic pain often describe their pain as hot/burning, or stabbing, or feels like pins and needles, or like electric shocks, or feel numb. Neuropathic pain tends to be worse at night and can severely impact sleep and mood.

The idpain questionnaire available on this website is a self assessment tool for neuropathic pain. If you have any of the above neuropathic pain symptoms, you may wish to download the idpain questionnaire, and discuss its results with your doctor.

Chronic pain is a significant public health problem in Australia. Recent figures show that chronic pain affects approximately 17% of males and 20% of Australian females. These rates are even higher within older age groups of both sexes. Lower back pain is the most common form of chronic pain and can affect up to 80% of people at some time during their lives. Although most cases of lower back pain are not too severe, pain may be significantly disabling for some patients. Common sites for pain include the back (45%), legs (42%), shoulders (29%), arms (22%) and neck (20%) but occasionally pain may affect many sites at once.

Most chronic pain develops after injuries sustained during sport or work. Therefore a significant amount of chronic pain can be avoided by safe practices and preventative techniques. Avoiding injury in the first place is theoretically an excellent way to minimise the amount of chronic pain. Further research is needed to determine methods of preventing acute pain from developing into chronic pain.

It has been shown that chronic pain can substantially impact on the activities of daily living of patients. A survey revealed that chronic pain interfered with daily activities in 11% of males and 13.5% of females. Furthermore, chronic pain may cause mental stress, impact on your quality of life, and increase your need for disability benefits and health care services.

In addition, chronic pain is associated with high levels of use of pain relief medications. Many analgesic medications can cause side effects and be harmful to one’s health when used in excess.

Chronic pain is a common reason for patients to visit their GP, particularly when the pain is severe or disabling. Chronic pain sufferers also access lots of other health services including pharmacists, physiotherapy, chiropractors, orthopaedic surgeons and occasionally mental health services. Thus, chronic pain chews up a lot of the limited health budget and creates burdens on the entire Australian health system. The magnitude of chronic pain and the burden on the community cannot be under-estimated. Unfortunately clear management guidelines for health professionals are currently lacking. Although there are various proven and effective treatments for chronic pain, it is particularly challenging applying these effectively to individual patients. Further research is needed to identify the best management strategies for chronic pain to reduce the huge burden of this condition.