Managing chronic pain in primary care

This chapter aims to address the management of chronic pain in primary care and takes as its starting point that all reasonable attempts to investigate and treat modifiable causes of pain have been made. The goal of treating chronic pain is to support the patient to live as well as possible, with the maximum quality of life, in spite of their chronic pain. Evaluating patient-reported outcomes is an important part of a comprehensive chronic pain assessment. There is good evidence for the limited benefit of pharmaceutical interventions in many chronic pain conditions with 40-50% of patients obtaining some benefit. Self-management tools can be effective to complement other drug and non-drug therapies. Pain Management Programs are based on combined psychological and behavioral approachesand combine patient education and practice sessions aimed at helping people with chronic pain to manage their pain and everyday activities better.