Pain COS Systematic Literature Review

Methods

Leadership on the INTEGRATE-Pain team conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify papers related to developing, updating, or implementing core outcome sets (COS) for adults or adolescents suffering from a pain condition, or a condition that has pain as one of the major symptoms (based on ICD-11 pain coding), with at least one explicit or possible pain management intervention. Papers were excluded if they were for younger children, not part of the ICD-11 pain codes, had interventions beyond pain management, or if the paper was only focused on a treatment.[1]

Published papers were identified from Medline (via OVID), from the COMET database, and by hand search, resulting in a total of more than 550 records. Approximately 250 studies were extracted from the systematic literature review, from which the INTEGRATE-Pain research team determined which studies to bring together to discuss the possibility of creating overarching core outcome sets for pain. The graphic below demonstrates the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the systematic literature review:

The studies selected from the SLR serve two purposes:

  1. Informing the INTEGRATE-Pain research team about planned, ongoing, or completed COS activities in the field of pain treatment and their relevant results.
  2. Supporting the identification of relevant pain-related initiatives and studies which will be involved in INTEGRATE-Pain activities, such as discussing the status quo of effectiveness and efficacy research in the field of pain research.

Acute Pain

Acute to Chronic Pain

Recurrent Pain

Chronic Pain

References:

[1] World Health Organization. ICD-11, International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision.