• Michael K Nicholas, Ali Asghari, Fiona M Blyth, Bradley M Wood, Robin Murray, Rebecca McCabe, Alan Brnabic, Lee Beeston, Mandy Corbett, Catherine Sherrington, and Sarah Overton.
• aPain Management Research Institute, University of Sydney at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia bSchool of Psychology, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran cSchool of Public Health, Concord Clinical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia dSax Institute, Sydney, Australia eABC Consulting, Sydney, Australia fThe George Institute, University of Sydney, Australia.
• Pain. 2017 Jan 1; 158 (1): 86-95.

AbstractThis study compares the outcomes, from pretreatment to 1-year follow-up, of an outpatient, CBT-based pain self-management program (PSM) that included exercises, pain education, and pain coping strategies, with a control condition (exercise-attention control, EAC) that included exercises and a control for the attention of the treatment team. We previously reported short-term results (to 1-month follow-up) from the same study. This new paper considers the important issue of maintenance of treatment-related gains. The participants (n = 141) were a heterogeneous sample of ambulant, community-dwelling older adult patients with chronic pain (mean age: 73.90 [6.5] years [range: 65-87 years]). The long-term results indicate the pain self-management program group achieved and maintained significantly better results than the exercise-attention control group on the primary outcome, pain-related disability, as well as on usual pain, pain distress, depression, and fear-avoidance beliefs. The mean effect size for these gains by the pain self-management program group over the exercise-attention control group was 0.37 (range: 0.29-0.45), which is in the small effect size range. While statistically and clinically meaningful, these findings do indicate some weakening in effects over time but not to a significant degree. The study has implications for the provision of pain management interventions for community-dwelling older adults with chronic pain.

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