Chronic pain as a symptom or a disease: the IASP Classification of Chronic Pain for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11)
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Discussion
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Implication
Working group report reveals a new diagnostic classification for chronic pain in clinical practice, highlighting chronic pain as an independent disease entity.
Key Points
- To establish a systematic classification of chronic pain conditions for inclusion in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) applicable across specialized and primary care settings.
- Convened an International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Working Group in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) to structure clinical pain taxonomies.
- Defined chronic pain operationally as persistent or recurrent pain lasting longer than 3 months.
- Classified chronic pain as an independent disease category termed 'chronic primary pain' for syndromes such as fibromyalgia and nonspecific low-back pain where pain is the principal complaint.
- Identified six categories of 'chronic secondary pain' where pain originates from underlying etiologies, including cancer-related, neuropathic, visceral, posttraumatic/postsurgical, headache/orofacial, and musculoskeletal pain.
- Provided an official coding framework designed to improve epidemiological tracking, healthcare policy decisions, and financing for multimodal pain management.
Cite This Study
Treede et al. (2018) studied this question.