[Treatment of chronic pain. Advantages of a multidisciplinary therapeutic decision unit (author's transl)]

The Chronic Pain center at the Henri Mondor Hospital is a multidisciplinary unit for out-patients created in 1980. Therapeutic indications are laid down by the specialists of the center, but treatments are carried out in the existing hospital departments. The patients are first seen by a neurologist and a psychiatrist, and therapeutic decisions are taken in a whole-staff session. The first 45 patients who attended the centre were complaining of sequelae of herniated disc operation, cancer pain or psychogenic pain, while patients with ordinary "conventional" pain were under-represented. The first results obtained underline the need for initial in-depth assessment of pain through a joint somatic and psychiatric approach.