The glass is half full

The “modern” criterion of 50% pain relief has long-standing precedents in the “ancient” literature. We agree that other measures of outcome, which reflect pain relief indirectly, are important, and accordingly for over two decades have routinely reported activities of daily living, return to work, patient satisfaction, need for additional treatment, and medication requirements. Physician and patient may deceive themselves (L. fallax, deceit) by undue reliance on any single outcome criterion. Relief of pain per se, however, is most relevant to the patient's presenting complaint, and however we choose to quantitate it, it is a sine qua non.