Developing a core outcome domain set to assessing effectiveness of interdisciplinary multimodal pain therapy: the VAPAIN consensus statement on core outcome domains.

Interdisciplinary multimodal pain therapy (IMPT) is a biopsychosocial treatment approach for patients with chronic pain that comprises at least psychological and physiotherapeutic interventions. Core outcome sets (COSs) are currently developed in different medical fields to standardize and improve the selection of outcome domains, and measurement instruments in clinical trials, to make trial results meaningful, to pool trial results, and to allow indirect comparison between interventions. The objective of this study was to develop a COS of patient-relevant outcome domains for chronic pain in IMPT clinical trials.

[What does pain intensity mean from the patient perspective? : A qualitative study on the patient perspective of pain intensity as an outcome parameter in treatment evaluation and on the interpretability of pain intensity measurements].

Background: Pain intensity (PI) is a common outcome parameter in effectiveness studies on interdisciplinary multimodal pain therapy (IMPT), despite the fact that IMPT highlights dealing with rather than reducing chronic pain. Moreover, the measurement of pain intensity as a highly subjective experience is problematic. Patient participation is absolutely essential to examine the relevance of PI as a criterion of treatment success as well as to select/develop suitable measurement methods.

[Patient perspectives in outcome research : Development of a focus group concept for collating patient perspectives on determination of effectiveness of multimodal pain therapy - A pilot study].

Background: To assess the efficacy of multimodal pain therapy for chronic pain patients it is necessary to use suitable outcome domains as well as reliable and valid measurement instruments. Using pain intensity as an example, however, it is shown that there are critical issues with respect to suitability for chronic pain patients and the quality (e.g.

Core Outcome Sets and Multidimensional Assessment Tools for Harmonizing Outcome Measure in Chronic Pain and Back Pain.

Core Outcome Sets (COSs) are a set of domains and measurement instruments recommended for application in any clinical trial to ensure comparable outcome assessment (both domains and instruments). COSs are not exclusively recommended for clinical trials, but also for daily record keeping in routine care. There are several COS recommendations considering clinical trials as well as multidimensional assessment tools to support daily record keeping in low back pain.