Quantifying the impact of concurrent analgesic use in interventional pain trials: a meta-epidemiologic study

The modest effect sizes of most pain treatments make it essential that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) use methods that clearly define treatment effects of interest and consider the role of concurrent treatments.

This study aims to determine how frequently concurrent analgesic use is reported in interventional pain RCTs and how accounting for analgesic use can affect estimates of pain intensity outcomes.

Meta-epidemiologic study.

We conducted a study of concurrent analgesic use among RCTs from a recent systematic review of non-surgical interventional pain treatments (n = 37). We calculated the prevalence of methods used to report concurrent analgesic use. We performed meta-analyses to compare treatment effects on pain intensity with vs without accounting for concurrent analgesic use via a novel quantitative composite outcome, the "QPAC1.5."

About half of interventional pain RCTs reported concurrent analgesic use, but only one directly accounted for concurrent analgesic use in their pain intensity outcome. Analyses accounting for concurrent analgesics using the QPAC1.5 substantially increased the estimated treatment effect of interventions on pain intensity by an average of -0.45 numeric rating scale points (95% CI -0.76 to -0.14; P < 0.001), as compared to analyses that did not adjust for analgesic use.

Concurrent analgesic use is sometimes reported in interventional pain RCTs, but rarely accounted for when examining treatment effects on pain intensity. Accounting for concurrent analgesic use may mitigate the effects of that use and substantially impact estimated treatment effect sizes.