Improvements from a small‐group multidisciplinary pain self‐management intervention for women living with pelvic pain maintained at 12 months

BackgroundA small‐group multidisciplinary pain self‐management program for women living with pelvic pain, with or without endometriosis, was developed to address identified unmet treatment needs. Following completion, over 80% of participants demonstrated clinically significant improvement across a number of domains. There was no clinically significant deterioration on any measure and benefits continued at three months follow‐up.AimsThis study examines patient‐reported outcomes at 12 months following program completion to ascertain maintenance of these improvements.Materials and methodsSelf‐report measures assessed quality of life across the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials domains prior to, at completion and 12 months following participation.ResultsAt 12 months follow‐up, improvement was seen in mean group scores for all baseline measures for 57% of participants who returned valid 12‐month follow‐up data, with clinically significant improvement seen for within‐subject scores for 50% of these participants for pain severity and also for pain‐related activity interference. Improvements were also reported in key predictors of long‐term outcomes, pain self‐efficacy and catastrophic worry, with 92% reporting improvement in each of these two constructs. There were 83% of respondents who reported feeling both improvement in overall sense of wellbeing and improvement in their physical ability compared to before the program.ConclusionsResults suggest that a six‐week multidisciplinary small‐group intervention increases participants' abilities to self‐manage pain and improves quality of life with lasting clinically significant improvements.