Optimal Information for Chronic Pain (OICP): Delphi Consensus on Patient Assessment and Interventional Techniques

Chronic pain is characterized by a persistence beyond the healing time of the injury. However, clinical documentation in this field remains highly variable, limiting the quality of patient care and research. Due to its multifactorial nature, a comprehensive evaluation of the methods used is essential. The objective of this work was to develop a consensus to define the optimal requirements for the evaluation of patients with chronic pain, with implications for real-world data analysis, predictive modeling, and standardized care pathways.

A Delphi method was employed to gather expert opinions and to establish optimal criteria for evaluating chronic pain patients. After composition of the steering group and selection of the expert panel, based on clinical experience and multidisciplinary background, three surveys were conducted related to patient/pathology, treatment and follow-up. Survey items were derived from literature review and clinical guidelines and rated on a 5-point Likert scale. Three rounds per survey were conducted and the variables were categorized as essential if more than 70%/70%/75% of the experts agreed and less than 20%/10%/5% disagreed in each of the 3 rounds. The variables on which there was most consensus cover the whole pain management, including demographics, pain treatments, and follow-up assessing pain and medication consumption.

The number of variables considered essential to be collected were 38/60 in patient/pathology survey, 103/150 in treatment survey and 13/34 in follow-up survey, reaching an overall percentage of 63.1%. The variables on which there was most consensus cover all pain management, including demographics, pain treatments, and follow-up assessing pain and medication use.

This work identifies several variables considered essential in the management of chronic pain patients, covering aspects related to the patient, pathology, treatment and follow-up, pointing out the importance of consensus within this field of medicine.