Defining Chronic Pain

To the Editor: We read with interest the article by Taylor, et al , “Is Chronic Pain a Disease in Its Own Right? Discussions from a Pre-OMERACT 2014 Workshop on Chronic Pain,” published in The Journal of Rheumatology 1. First, we are quite amazed to see how widespread the attendees’ responses were regarding the definition of chronic pain (CP) after a few presentations were given, including 1 proposing that CP should no longer be seen as a symptom. Out of the 5 choices given for the definition of CP, 9% selected “disease,” 26% selected “condition,” 11% selected “syndrome,” 23% selected “symptom complex,” and 31% selected “none of the above.” It is somewhat difficult to accept that only 9% of attendees chose “disease” during the pre-work survey at the workshop, where “Is chronic pain a disease in its own right?” was supposed to be the main objective of this meeting. … Address correspondence to Associate Professor X. Ruan, Anesthesiology, Louisiana State University Health Science Center, 1542 Tulane Ave., New Orleans, Louisiana 70112, USA. E-mail: drxruan88{at}gmail.com