The impact of pain management on quality of life

Abstract

Although its inclusion in medical research is relatively recent and its interpretation is often variable, quality of life is increasingly being recognized as one of the most important parameters to be measured in the evaluation of medical therapies, including those for pain management. Pain, when it is not effectively treated and relieved, has a detrimental effect on all aspects of quality of life. This negative impact has been found to span every age and every type and source of pain in which it has been studied. Effective analgesic therapy has been shown to improve quality of life by relieving pain. Opioid analgesics, cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 inhibitors (or coxibs), and several adjuvant analgesics for neuropathic pain have been demonstrated to significantly improve quality-of-life scores in patients with pain. Coxibs provide effective, well-tolerated analgesia without some of the issues faced with opioids-benefits that should translate into improved quality of life. Recent studies have demonstrated that the COX-2 inhibitor rofecoxib significantly improves quality of life in patients with osteoarthritis and chronic, lower back pain. Quality-of-life measurements, especially symptom distress scales, can also be used as sensitive means of differentiating one agent from another in the same class. In future pharmacotherapeutic research, quality of life should be included as an outcome domain as are the traditionally measured variables of efficacy and safety. In particular, future studies of coxibs should include symptom distress scores as important quality-of-life measurements, to identify meaningful differences between this new class of analgesics and nonselective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.