An Evaluation of the Long-Term Treatment Outcomes of an Interdisciplinary Chronic Pain Centre Program

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to re-evaluate clients of a chronic pain center treatment program at least one year following their completion of the program to determine whether they had maintained improvements and to compare them to a group of clients who underwent the initial assessment but did not attend the treatment program. Methods: The Chronic Pain Center, located in a mid-size Canadian city, offers an interdisciplinary treatment program. They had documented statistically significant improvement on several measures at the completion of the program but had no formal evaluation of longer-term effects. All clients assessed between 2004 and 2007 were invited to complete an evaluation by mail-out questionnaires, resulting in 142 participants [treatment group = 88, comparison group = 54]. Results: The treatment group demonstrated significant improvement from assessment to discharge on all outcome measures. These improvements declined over time but remained significantly improved from the admission scores [Wilks' Lambda = 0.501, F(1,48) = 4.788, P = 0.001]. However, no significant differences between the treatment and the comparison groups were found on any of the outcome measures at follow-up [Wilks' Lambda = 0.930, F(1,107) = 1.014, P = 0.430]. Conclusions: Statistically significant improvement of treatment participants, over a short time period, which was maintained over time, strengthens the inference that the treatment program had a positive impact. Study limitations, including recruitment method and the use of a non-randomized comparison group, may have affected the ability to demonstrate a difference between the treatment and the comparison groups. Statistically significant improvements, however, need to be studied in more depth to determine how they relate to clinical significance.