Objective:

Determine the shortcomings and strengths of our pain clinic derived from the knowledge of the profile of the patients who are referred for care in the clinic.

Patients and methods:

Cross-sectional descriptive study on 5000 patients referred to our pain clinic between 2017 y 2020. The following data were collected: number of patients referred per month, age, sex, referring service, location of pain, patients referred preferentially, rejected patients, and previously attended consultations. Data on surgical history, obesity, and use of psychoactive drugs were also recorded for the first 1000 patients.

Results:

An average of 1560 patients were referred for evaluation per year (130 per month), with a mean age of 59.8 years (± 14.3) of which 62.6 % are women and 62.08 % were of working age. The healthcare services that referred the most patients were Orthopedic Surgery, Neurosurgery, Spine Unit and Rehabilitation. 6.6 % of the requests were derived preferentially. Of the referrals, 9.98 % were rejected. The most frequent pain locations were low back pain, neck pain and generalized pain. In the The usual taking of anxiolytics and / or antidepressants was found in 34.9 %, 10.8 % were diagnosed as obese and 10.3 % were referred for chronic postoperative pain.

Conclusions:

The profile of the predominant patient referred to our pain clinic is an older adult, of working age, female, referred from the orthopedics department and with pain in the lumbar region. This described profile is very similar to other pain units in the developed western world. Almost one in 3 patients may suffer from anxiety and / or depression, and post-surgical pain and obesity are also very common.

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