Occupational disorders and the management of chronic pain.

Abstract

Chronic pain affects a small proportion of patients with an occupational injury but can result in astronomical costs for future medical care, indemnity, and social service utilization. To provide adequate treatment, medical practitioners must make a conceptual shift from the disease-intervention model to visualizing chronic pain as a multifactorial syndrome with alterable components. Focusing on deconditioning and disability provides a means to subjective and objective improvement for these patients and gives a better measure of therapeutic success.