Is there a geographic and gender divide in Europe regarding the biopsychosocial approach to pain research? An evaluation of the 12th EFIC congress.

Abstract

All pain research combined advances the different domains of the biopsychosocial model and its interactions. However, there may be discrepancies between individual countries in their biomedical, psychological or social focus to pain research. As a proxy for this possible discrepancy, we analysed the biopsychosocial orientation ofpresentations at a recent major international pain conference. The primary aim was to investigate whether there are geographical differences across Europe regarding the biopsychosocial orientation of workshop presentations at the 12th EFIC congress. The secondary aim was to investigate whether there were differences between female andmale presenters regarding the biopsychosocial focus oftheir presentations. All available workshop abstracts wereblinded and categorised by two independent reviewers as biomedical, psychosocial, biopsychosocial, or not applicable. Psychosocial and biopsychosocial were merged to non-biomedical. Of the 140 available abstracts, 126 abstracts could be categorised (biomedical: 51 %; non-biomedical: 49 %). Three clusters of countries emerged: (1) countries with a clear majority (≥80 %) of non-biomedical presentations (TheNetherlands and Belgium); (2) countries with a balance between biomedical and non-biomedical presentations (United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland); and (3) countries with a clear majority (71-100 %) of biomedical presentations (Italy, Germany, Switzerland andFrance). Overall, women delivered more presentations than men (70 vs. 56 presentations), and delivered proportionally more non-biomedical presentations (57 %) whereas men delivered proportionally more biomedical presentations (61 %). Analysis of the 12th EFIC congress revealed geographical and gender differences in biopsychosocial orientation. Whether this reflects established differences inpain research requires further investigation.