Optimal Information for Chronic Pain (OICP): Delphi Consensus on Patient Assessment and Interventional Techniques

Victor Frutos,1 Diego Delgado,2 Tomas Cuñat,3 José Luis Aguilar,1 Jordi Recasens-Urbez,4 Marta Homs,4 Almudena Fernandez-Bravo,5 Rosa María Izquierdo,6 Juan Munoz-Ortego,7 Mikel Sánchez,2,8 Carlos Cordero-García,9 David Abejón,10 María Cayuela11 1Pain Management Unit, Hospital Quironsalud Palmaplanas, Palma, Spain; 2Advanced Biological Therapy Unit, Hospital Vithas Vitoria, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; 3Pain Management Unit, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; 4Pain Management Unit, Hospital Universitari Dexeus, Barcelona, Spain; 5Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Hospital Universitario Fundación Jiménez Díaz, Madrid, Spain; 6Pain Management Unit, Hospital La Fe, Valencia, Spain; 7Centro Médico Teknon & CEO Regenera Medical Center, Barcelona, Spain; 8Arthroscopic Surgery Unit, Hospital Vithas Vitoria, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; 9Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Hospital Universitario Juan Ramón Jiménez, Huelva, Spain; 10Pain Management Unit, Hospital Universitario Quirónsalud Madrid, Madrid, Spain; 11BioSmartData SL, Marratxí, SpainCorrespondence: Victor Frutos, Pain Management Unit, Hospital Quironsalud Palmaplanas, Camí dels Reis, 308, Nord, Palma, Illes Balears, 07010, Spain, Email [email protected] María Cayuela, BioSmartData SL, C/ Xesc Forteza (Actor), 5 – Local – 07141, Marratxí, Illes Balears, Spain, Email [email protected]: Chronic pain is characterized by a persistence beyond the healing time of the injury. However, clinical documentation in this field remains highly variable, limiting the quality of patient care and research. Due to its multifactorial nature, a comprehensive evaluation of the methods used is essential. The objective of this work was to develop a consensus to define the optimal requirements for the evaluation of patients with chronic pain, with implications for real-world data analysis, predictive modeling, and standardized care pathways.Patients and Methods: A Delphi method was employed to gather expert opinions and to establish optimal criteria for evaluating chronic pain patients. After composition of the steering group and selection of the expert panel, based on clinical experience and multidisciplinary background, three surveys were conducted related to patient/pathology, treatment and follow-up. Survey items were derived from literature review and clinical guidelines and rated on a 5-point Likert scale. Three rounds per survey were conducted and the variables were categorized as essential if more than 70%/70%/75% of the experts agreed and less than 20%/10%/5% disagreed in each of the 3 rounds. The variables on which there was most consensus cover the whole pain management, including demographics, pain treatments, and follow-up assessing pain and medication consumption.Results: The number of variables considered essential to be collected were 38/60 in patient/pathology survey, 103/150 in treatment survey and 13/34 in follow-up survey, reaching an overall percentage of 63.1%. The variables on which there was most consensus cover all pain management, including demographics, pain treatments, and follow-up assessing pain and medication use.Conclusion: This work identifies several variables considered essential in the management of chronic pain patients, covering aspects related to the patient, pathology, treatment and follow-up, pointing out the importance of consensus within this field of medicine.Plain Language Summary: Chronic pain can have a serious impact on people’s lives, often lasting for months or years and affecting their ability to work, sleep, and enjoy daily activities. Doctors and healthcare teams need reliable and consistent information to properly assess and treat people living with chronic pain. However, there is no widely agreed list of the most important information that should be collected when seeing these patients.To help solve this, a group of pain specialists from across Spain worked together using a method called Delphi. This approach allows experts to anonymously share their opinions over several rounds of surveys until they reach agreement. The goal was to identify an optimal set of essential information that should be recorded for every person with chronic pain.The researchers developed three surveys focused on the patient’s condition, the treatments received, and the follow-up care. After three rounds, the group agreed on a list of 154 key data points. These include details such as pain location, treatments used, medication response, and how pain affects the person’s daily life.This agreed set of information – called the Optimal Information for Chronic Pain (OICP) – can help improve communication between healthcare professionals, support better decision-making, and make it easier to compare results between clinics and research studies. It also sets a foundation for using real-world data and digital tools in chronic pain care.By standardizing how chronic pain is evaluated, this work aims to improve the quality and consistency of care for people living with this challenging condition.Keywords: consensus methodology, real-world data, health information standardization, clinical data collection, pain medicine, multidisciplinary evaluation