Survey on current treatments for pain after spinal cord damage

Abstract

Study design: An online questionnaire. Objectives: To assess the international spinal cord medicine and rehabilitation community’s utilization of pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments for spinal cord damage (SCD)-related pain and to determine whether approaches to SCD-related pain differ between developed and less developed nations. Setting: An international collaboration of authors. Methods: An on-line survey querying availability and utilization of a number of approaches to SCD-related pain was developed, distributed, and made available for 6 months. Responses were analyzed for the entire cohort and according to participants’ descriptions of their home nations’ economies. Results: A total of 153 responses were submitted, mostly from developed nations. Nearly three quarters of subjects reported offering their patients with SCD narcotics; only 13% reported offering their patients with SCD medical cannabis. Subjects from developing countries were more likely than those from developed countries to prescribe buprenorphine (20.0% vs 15.6%; p = 0.001) and less likely to prescribe medical cannabis (0% vs 15.6%; p = 0.001) and acupuncture (4.0% vs 23.4%; p = 0.02). Conclusions: Most spinal cord medicine clinicians employ a multimodal approach to pain. There are significant differences in utilization of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic approach to SCD-related pain between clinicians from more and less developed countries.