The challenges of assessing outcome in chronic pain

Clinicians in chronic pain services are facing the need to develop meaningful and methodologically adequate measures, not only to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and to assure quality, but also to support the continued funding and future development of such services. Explores the problems inherent in assessing outcomes in chronic pain. These include the complexity of the chronic pain syndrome itself, the multidimensional nature of interventions and the challenges of defining outcomes in the chronic illness syndrome. The complexity and challenges of assessing outcomes may lead to some reticence in facing the challenges but it is the responsibility of the clinicians to continue developing measures and to communicate to purchasers and other stakeholders the complexity of assessing outcomes in chronic pain.