Person-centered medicine versus personalized medicine: is it just a sophism? A view from chronic pain management

Abstract

The main aim of this brief overview is to explore the concepts of person-centered medicine and personalized medicine in the areas of chronic pain research and management. Through several definitions and paradigms of pain, the authors introduce the complexity of pain phenomenology in order to establish the challenge of person-centered and personalized medicine in everyday practice. By providing deeper insight into fibromyalgia, its presentation, biology and treatment, several questions are addressed, ranging from person-centered diagnosis to personalizing the various processes of the fibromyalgia spectrum complex. By reviewing current treatment options and evaluating treatment pitfalls derived from methodological flaws in current research, the authors discuss various possibilities of personalizing treatment and, therefore, propose how the use of these two paradigms could enhance outcomes in chronic pain management. If we wish to make comments about enhanced outcomes we need to talk about outcomes of pain treatments, we need to discuss what successful treatment is from the patient's point of view as well as in the reviewed models.