Chronic back pain costs €10k a year

CHRONIC pain costs €6,000-€10,000 a year for each sufferer when loss of earnings, hospital fees and bills for other medical treatments and supports are added up.

The calculations were part of a two-year study by the Centre for Pain Research at NUI, Galway which found one in three adults contacted through GP surgeries suffered chronic pain and had been in pain for an average of seven and a half years. Chronic pain is pain that persists for more than three months, but psychologist Dr Brian McGuire, who headed the study, said he was struck by the much longer periods of time people suffered.

More than one in 10 (21.5%) had been in pain for more than 10 years. “It’s a very chronic, enduring, persistent health problem,” he said. The likelihood of chronic pain increased with age, affecting 50% of the over 65s, and older people were more likely to report more debilitating levels of pain. More than one in three people (37%) described their pain as Grade 1 — of low intensity with a low interference rate in their lives — but 11% said it was Grade 4, of high intensity with a severely limiting effect. Back pain was the biggest problem for younger age groups while knee pain was the most common problem for the over 65s.