Current Status of Pain Clinics in Korea

Moon, Dong Eon; Yang, Nae Yun; Choi, Young Kook; Ryu, Keon Hee; Shim, Jae Yong; Yoon, Keon Jung; Kim, Wook Seoung; Min, Jin Hye

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Twelve years have passed since the Korean Pain Society was organized. Nowadays, there are so many problems to be solved in pain clinics including health insurance, pain education and public information etc. in Korea. The present study was designed to evaluate the current status of pain clinics in Korea.
METHODS
Eight hundred twenty regular members of Korean Pain Society were surveyed by questionnaire in October 1997. We compared the general characteristics, contents of diseases in pain clinic, treatment methods, patients satisfaction, pain educations, problems in pain treatments, requests to Korean Pain Society among the 138 respondents.
RESULTS
Thirty seven percents of the respondents worked at university hospitals, 39% at non-university hospitals and 24% at private pain clinics. The most common diseases treated in pain clinics was low back pain(32% in university and non-university hospital and 28% in private pain clinic respectively). However, cancer pain was 10% in university and non-university hospital and 0.7% in private pain clinic, Epidural block was the most frequently used procedure in chronic pain treatments. And 74.6% of the respondents were studied and learned in Korea and Japan. And then, current problems in pain management and requests to Korean Pain Society were medical insurance problems, pain education and public information of pain clinics.
CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that the Korean Pain Society should make an effort to solve these current problems in order to activate pain medicine and increase the quality of life for those suffering from pain.