Abstract
Background. The usefulness of mHealth in helping to target face-to-face interventions for chronic pain more effectively remains unclear. In the present study, we aim to test whether the Pain Monitor mobile phone application (app) is well accepted by clinicians, and can help improve existent medical treatments for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Regarding this last goal, we compared three treatment conditions, namely usual treatment, usual treatment with an app without alarms and usual treatment with an app with alarms. All treatments lasted one month. The three treatments were compared for all outcomes, i.e., pain severity and interference, fatigue, depressed mood, anxiety and anger. Methods. In this randomized controlled trial, the usual monitoring method (i.e., onsite; n = 44) was compared with daily ecological momentary assessment using the Pain Monitor app—both with (n = 43) and without alarms (n = 45). Alarms were sent to the clinicians in the presence of pre-established undesired clinical events and could be used to make treatment adjustments throughout the one-month study. Results. With the exception of anger, clinically significant changes (CSC; 30% improvement) were greater in the app + alarm condition across outcomes (e.g., 43.6% of patients experienced a CSC in depressed mood in the app + alarm condition, which occurred in less than 29% of patients in the other groups). The clinicians were willing to use the app, especially the version with alarms. Conclusions. The use of apps may have some benefits in individual health care, especially when using alarms to tailor treatments.
Highlights
Chronic Pain: A Major Public Health ChallengeChronic pain is a multidimensional, distressing experience that can occur with or without tissue damage and persists over extended periods of time [1]
Because we anticipated some attrition due to the longitudinal nature of the study and the occurrence of technological problems, we recruited 165 patients which were randomly assigned to conditions prior to recruitment. This resulted in 56 patients in the treatment as usual (TAU) condition, 56 in the TAU + app condition and 53 in the TAU + app + alarms condition
Data were obtained from patients in the TAU condition, patients in the TAU + app condition and 43 patients in the TAU + app + alarm condition, which corresponds to 78.6%, 80.4% and 81.1% of the initial sample, respectively
Summary
Chronic pain is a multidimensional, distressing experience that can occur with or without tissue damage and persists over extended periods of time (at least three months) [1]. Pain Monitor mobile phone application (app) is well accepted by clinicians, and can help improve existent medical treatments for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Regarding this last goal, we compared three treatment conditions, namely usual treatment, usual treatment with an app without alarms and usual treatment with an app with alarms. The use of apps may have some benefits in individual health care, especially when using alarms to tailor treatments
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
More From: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.