Background: A small-group multidisciplinary pain self-management program for women living with pelvic pain, with or without endometriosis, was developed to address identified unmet treatment needs. Following completion, over 80% of participants demonstrated clinically significant improvement across a number of domains. There was no clinically significant deterioration on any measure and benefits continued at three months follow-up.
Aims: This study examines patient-reported outcomes at 12 months following program completion to ascertain maintenance of these improvements.
Materials and methods: Self-report measures assessed quality of life across the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials domains prior to, at completion and 12 months following participation.
Results: At 12 months follow-up, improvement was seen in mean group scores for all baseline measures for 57% of participants who returned valid 12-month follow-up data, with clinically significant improvement seen for within-subject scores for 50% of these participants for pain severity and also for pain-related activity interference. Improvements were also reported in key predictors of long-term outcomes, pain self-efficacy and catastrophic worry, with 92% reporting improvement in each of these two constructs. There were 83% of respondents who reported feeling both improvement in overall sense of wellbeing and improvement in their physical ability compared to before the program.
Conclusions: Results suggest that a six-week multidisciplinary small-group intervention increases participants' abilities to self-manage pain and improves quality of life with lasting clinically significant improvements.
Keywords: chronic pain; endometriosis; multidisciplinary pain clinic; pain management; pelvic pain.
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