Welcome at VAPAIN
deutschVAPAIN (Validation and Application of a patient relevant core outcome set to assess effectiveness of multimodal PAIN therapy) is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF 01GY1326). The project is a co-operation between the University PainCenter and the Center for Evidence-Based Healthcare.
VAPAIN targets at the development of a methodological background to conduct studies to investigate effectiveness of multimodal pain therapy in clinical trials and daily record keeping. VAPAIN follows thereby initiatives such as OMERACT, COMETand COSMIN, which have done much effort to enhance quality of clinical trials in health research over the last decades. The main focus of such initiatives is to ensure a more secure and profound decision about therapy approaches and target patient population. A careful handling of resources of society and patient as well will be supported by that way.
Multimodal pain therapy
According to the German Pain Society interdisciplinary multimodal pain therapy is defined as the simultaneous, contextual, temporal and coordinated, comprehensive strategy to treat chronic pain patients integrating different somatic, physical as well as psychological treatment approaches with identical and within the therapeutic team consensual therapeutic aims (Arnold et al., 2009). The standardized treatment is performed by a team of physicians of different disciplines, psychotherapists or clinical psychologists and other disciplines such as physiotherapists, ergo therapists, and others. The objective and subjective restoration with increased controllability and the sense of competence of the patients is the central aim of this resource-orientated approach (Arnold et al., 2009).
Why VAPAIN?
The multimodal pain therapy of chronic pain applies to a complex condition and simultaneously is provided under different circumstances and settings. Measuring the effectiveness of multimodal pain therapy is therefore one of the most fundamental challenges communicating clinically relevant information.
The assessment of the effectiveness of multimodal pain therapy in clinical trials and in routine care is rather heterogeneous at present. This leads to the situation, that studies and treatments cannot be reliably compared according to the principles of evidence based medicine. This constitutes an important barrier in clinical decision making. Recent initiatives, such as IMMPACT, focused mainly on clinical trials only. Additionally multimodal pain therapy with its specific therapy aims seems to need other outcomes as medical trials. Over the last decades there has been much research in relevant biopsychosocial concepts on chronic pain which have not been considered in other initiatives so far and might be highly relevant in multimodal pain therapy.
That is why VAPAIN is an important answer to the question about effectiveness in multimodal pain therapy and adds new perspectives into the ongoing discussion.
Following recently discussed standards in measurement in health research such as OMERACT, COSMIN and COMET, VAPAIN aims to develop such a core outcome set (COS) for multimodal pain therapy. A preferable acceptance of such a COS can only be achieved by consensus of the most relevant stakeholders. For VAPAIN this stakeholder groups consist of physicians (specialized in pain medicine), physiotherapists, psychotherapists, researchers and patients.
Team
from left to right.: Stefanie Deckert, Katrin Neustadt, Christian Kropkow, Prof. Jochen Schmitt, Prof. Rainer Sabatowski, Dr. Ulrike Kaiser
For information about VAPAIN please contact:
For co-operation partners:
Dr. rer. nat. Dipl.-Psych. Ulrike Kaiser
Principal Investigator VAPAIN
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Comprehensive Pain Center University Hospital Technical University Dresden, Germany
Phone: 0351 458-5981
E-Mail: ulrike.kaiser.usc-tkl
For Delphi-Panel-members:
Stefanie Deckert, MPH
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Center for Evidence-Based Healthcare
Phone: 0351 458-6497
E-Mail: stefanie.deckert
For the Advisory Board:
Christian Kopkow, BSc PT, MPH
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Center for Evidence-Based Healthcare
Phone: 0351 458-6492
E-Mail: christian.kopkow
For the focus groups:
Dipl.-Psych. Katrin Neustadt
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Comprehensive Pain Center University Hospital Technical University Dresden, Germany
Phone: 0351 458-4826
E-Mail: katrin.neustadt
Project Assistance:
Julia Pritzke
Project Assistent
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Comprehensive Pain Center University Hospital Technical University Dresden, Germany
Phone: 0351 458-19243
E-Mail: julia pritzke