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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Pain Med. 2014 Dec 28;16(5):855–865. doi: 10.1111/pme.12643

Table 2.

Characteristics of VA patients with CNCP, comparing short-term variability subgroup to patients not included in short-term variability subgroup

Short-term
variability
subgroup
(N=4,336)*
Not in short-term
variability
subgroup
(N=8,598)**
p-value
Demographic characteristics
Age (years):Mean(SD) 73.51 (7.42) 72.93 (7.13) <0.001
Sex: Male 4,154 (95.80) 8,319 (96.76) 0.006
Race/Ethnicity <0.001
  White(non-Hispanic) 2,799 (64.55) 5,687 (66.14)
  Black(non-Hispanic) 862 (19.88) 1,435 (16.69)
  Hispanic 272 (6.27) 484(5.63)
  Other 188 (4.34) 411 (4.78)
  Unknown 215 (4.96) 581 (6.76)
Marital status <0.001
  Married 2,280 (52.58) 5,126 (59.62)
  Divorced/Separated 1,153 (26.59) 1,995 (23.20)
  Single/Never Married 268 (6.18) 422 (4.91)
  Widowed 635 (14.64) 1,055 (12.27)
Percent service-connected disability <0.001
  Not service-connected 1,731 (39.92) 3,430 (39.89)
  Less than 50% 551 (12.71) 1,303 (15.15)
  50% or more 2,054 (47.37) 3,865 (44.95)
Clinical characteristics (12 months prior to index date):
Baseline pain intensity***: Mean(SD) 5.34 (1.61) 5.71 (1.57) <0.001
Selim comorbidity index score <0.001
  0–5 1,130 (26.06) 3,785 (44.02)
  6–10 2,098 (48.39) 3,933 (45.74)
  11–15 851 (19.63) 761 (8.85)
  16–24 257 (5.93) 119 (1.38)
Major surgery 147 (3.39) 189 (2.20) <0.001
Any Mental health diagnosis**** 1,904 (43.91) 3,357 (39.04) <0.001
Nicotine or substance use disorder 739 (17.04) 1,402 (16.31) 0.287
Pain diagnoses
  Chronic neck/joint pain 2,763 (63.72) 5,114 (59.48) <0.001
  Rheumatism/Arthritis/Gout 2,905 (67.00) 5,537 (64.40) 0.003
  Fibromyalgia 198 (4.57) 306 (3.56) 0.005
  Chronic lower back pain 2,026 (46.73) 3,974 (46.22) 0.587
  Neuropathies 1,228 (28.32) 1,960 (22.80) <0.001
  Headache/Migraine 363 (8.37) 614 (7.14) 0.012
  Other musculoskeletal pain 2,082 (48.02) 3,535 (41.11) <0.001
*

Short term variability subgroup = main study sample: Patients with two or more months which contained multiple numeric rating scale (NRS) pain intensity scores

**

Not in short term variability subgroup: Patients who had less than two months during the follow-up period in which there were two or more scores

***

Baseline pain intensity score is average of all monthly NRS pain scores beginning with first qualifying monthly pain score and ending with last qualifying monthly pain score prior to the index date.

****

Includes major depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia