Highlights
- •Pain catastrophizing was statistically associated with opioid misuse.
- •Pain catastrophizing was not associated with opioid dose.
- •Inconsistencies exist regarding links between pain catastrophizing and opioid use.
Abstract
The objective of this study was to analyze the cross-sectional and longitudinal association
between pain catastrophizing and opioid misuse, opioid use, and opioid dose in people
with chronic musculoskeletal pain. For this systematic review, CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO,
PubMed, manual searches, and grey literature were searched from inception to May 2020.
Observational studies were included if they evaluated the association between pain
catastrophizing and opioid dose, opioid use, and/or opioid misuse in people with chronic
musculoskeletal pain. Two reviewers independently performed the study selection, data
extraction, risk of bias assessment, and the certainty of the evidence judgment. Seven
observational studies (all cross-sectional designs) satisfied the eligibility criteria,
with a total sample of 2,160 participants. Pain catastrophizing was associated with
opioid misuse. The results were inconsistent regarding the association between pain
catastrophizing and opioid use. A lack of association was found considering pain catastrophizing
and the opioid dose. However, the presence of risk of bias and imprecision was serious
across the included studies, and therefore, the overall certainty of the evidence
was judged as very low for all the outcome measures. This report concludes that pain
catastrophizing seem to be associated with opioid misuse in people with chronic musculoskeletal
pain. However, the very low certainty of the current evidence confers to interpret
the finding of this review as exclusively informative.
Perspective
This article shows that pain catastrophizing seem to be associated with opioid misuse
in people with chronic musculoskeletal pain. The overall certainty of the evidence
was judged to be very low, thus, these results should be interpreted with caution.
Key words
Abbreviations:
MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), GRADE (the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation), PRISMA (the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 10, 2021
Footnotes
Conflict of interest: Dr. Javier Martinez-Calderon is supported by the Universidad de Malaga through a postdoctoral grant. All authors state that they have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Disclosures: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Device statement: The manuscript submitted does not contain information about medical device(s).
Data sharing: all data relevant to the study are included in the article or are available as supplementary files.
Patient and public involvement in the research: patients/athletes/public partners were not involved.
Authorship: all authors have made a substantial scientific contribution to the study in terms of (1) conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and (3) final approval of the version to be published.
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© 2021 by United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc.
