Prediction of long-term outcome of multidisciplinary pain treatment

Seventy-seven patients treated in a multidisciplinary pain program were assessed for treatment outcome according to Roberts' and Reinhardt's criteria, at a one to five-year follow-up. By these criteria, 47% were successes and 53% were not. Fourteen commonly collected demographic variables were then used in a discriminant analysis procedure to predict membership in the successful and unsuccessful groups. Age, compensation, education level, use of psychotropic medications, and number of pain surgeries formed a parsimonious set of predictor variables that correctly categorized more than 70% of the subjects.