British journal of anaesthesia
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Prevention of persistent pain after breast cancer surgery, via early identification of patients at high risk, is a clinical need. Psychological factors are among the most consistently proposed predictive parameters for the development of persistent pain. However, repeated use of long psychological questionnaires in this context may be exhaustive for a patient and inconvenient in everyday clinical practice. ⋯ Using a data-driven machine-learning approach, a short list of seven items from BDI and STAI is proposed as a basis for a predictive tool for the persistence of pain after breast cancer surgery.