Commentator Discussion: The implementation of an electronic symptom management (eSyM) system to monitor postoperative pain in thoracic surgery patients: A multicenter evaluation

Good afternoon, everybody.I wish to thank the American Association for Thoracic Surgery for the privilege of discussing this amazing prospective, multicentered cohort study of 680 patients using this innovative, electronic medical record-embedded electronic symptom management system.Since we don't have a lot of time, I'll be very, very quick.So, is there a reason why you guys didn't collect baseline patientreported outcome data?Mr Jacob Hurd (Boston, Mass).That's a great point.We certainly considered looking into that in the future.We wanted to isolate specifically the postoperative perspective here, and with the larger implementation study from our clinical trial, we do hope to look into that.Dr Varghese.Fair enough.And then you said there were 2 predictors for receiving an additional postoperative pain prescription-being divorced and being unemployed.Are those actual factors, or are they surrogate markers for