RESEARCH - Pain at the end of life is common and strongly linked to arthritis

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From Medscape Medical News

Laurie Barclay, MD

Pain at the End of Life Is Common and Strongly Linked to Arthritis

November 3, 2010 — Pain at the end of life is common and is strongly

linked to arthritis, according to the results of an observational

study reported in the November 2 issue of the ls of Internal

Medicine.

" The epidemiology of pain during the last years of life has not been

well described, " write K. , MD, MS, MPH, from the

University of California, San Francisco and Veterans Affairs Medical

Center in San Francisco, California, and colleagues. " ...As patients

approach the last years of life, goals of care focus more on quality

of life; management of symptomatic distress, especially pain, may

become more important than disease management. "

With use of data from 4703 participants who died while enrolled in the

Health and Retirement Study, the goal of the study was to describe the

prevalence and clinical correlates of pain during the last 2 years of

life. The Health and Retirement Study, which took place from 1994 to

2006, was a nationally representative survey of community-living older

adults.

In the last 24 months of life, each participant or proxy was

interviewed once and was classified into 1 of 24 cohorts based on the

number of months between the interview and death. The investigators

modeled the association between time before death and pain, after

adjustment for age, sex, race or ethnicity, educational level, net

worth, income, terminal diagnosis category, presence of arthritis, and

proxy status. The primary study endpoint was clinically significant

pain, defined as reported pain of moderate or greater severity that

" often troubled " the participant.

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Read the entire article here:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/731855

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