The following are the most important diseases or complications that may be contributed to by chronic pain:
Psyche – Nervous System (F00-F99; G00-G99).
- Depression
- Insomnia (sleep disturbances) – up to 80% of patients with chronic pain.
Symptoms and abnormal clinical and laboratory parameters not elsewhere classified (R00-R99).
- Cachexia (emaciation; very severe emaciation).
- Tendency to fall – almost doubled in adults over 50 years of age and presence of multilocular (“in multiple locations”) pain compared with peers without pain
Further
- Incapacity for work/employment
- Decline in cognitive abilities (patients > 60 years of age).
- Social isolation
Prognostic factors
- Pain chronification is significantly promoted by disturbances in the experience with anxiety and depression. Therefore, successful pain medicine intervention requires assessment of the patient’s biography and personality.
- Preoperative opiate use poses a risk for chronicized postoperative pain; one year later, one-third of those operated on still complained of a surgery-related pain problem.
- Animal studies show that acute or chronic sleep deprivation may increase pain sensitivity.
