(330) The Role of Tobacco Smoking in the Transition from Acute to Chronic Pain

Abstract

Tobacco smoking is highly prevalent among patients with chronic pain. The prevalence of smoking has been found to range between 30-60% among patients with chronic pain, and to be approximately 15% in the general population. To date, however, the degree to which tobacco smoking contributes to the development of chronic pain remains unclear. The main objective of this study was to examine the role of tobacco smoking in the transition from acute pain to chronic pain. The sample consisted of adult patients enrolled in the UK Biobank, a large prospective cohort study involving more than 500,000 patients receiving medical care through the UK National Health Service (NHS). Patients were asked to complete self-report questionnaires at three separate time points (i.e., between 2006 and 2014) that assessed a host of demographic, lifestyle, pain, and psychological variables. Across different types of pain diagnoses, analyses indicated that patients smoking tobacco were significantly more likely to develop chronic pain symptoms after an acute pain episode than patients who never smoked (OR = 1.4, p