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Pain in a Swedish spinal cord injury population

Spinalis SCI unit, Karolinska Hospital and Faculty of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm

Iréne Lund

Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm

Per Ertzgaard

Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping

Anders Holtz

Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital, Uppsala

Claes Hultling

Spinalis SCI unit, Karolinska Hospital and Faculty of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm

Richard Levi

Frösunda Center, Solna and Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm

Lars Werhagen

Spinalis SCI unit, Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm

Thomas Lundeberg

Spinalis SCI Unit, Karolinska Hospital, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Objective: To describe pain and associated variables in a prevalence group of persons with a sustained spinal cord injury (SCI) in the Swedish capital and its surroundings.

Setting: Spinalis SCI Unit (outpatient clinic), Stockholm, Sweden. Design: Assessment over a 12-month period in a yearly health control.

Subjects: Four hundred and fifty-six SCI patients.

Results: Two hundred and ninety-one out of 456 SCI patients (63.7%) suffered from pain, and in 45.7% of these it was classified as being neurogenic. Aching pain was the most used descriptor (38.5%). The onset of pain was commonly within three months (73.5%). In 70.4% of patients pain occurred below the level of the lesion. Most patients identified pain as coming from one (55.0%) or two (28.2%) body regions. Rating of the general pain intensity on a visual analogue scale (VAS) was 46 out of 100 and rating of the worst pain intensity was 78 out of 100. Ninety-four out of 276 patients (32.3%) considered that their quality of life was significantly affected by pain.

Conclusion: Pain was most common in patients with incomplete lesions (ASIA impairment grade D) and there was a correlation between pain and higher mean age at injury and between pain and female gender.

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