Academic Interest in Pain: Comparison of Four Specialties With Long-Standing Involvement in Pain Medicine

Purpose

One of the most interesting signs of growth in a medical specialty is the addition of pain medicine as a clinical subspecialty to it. The aim of this study was to analyze publication-based academic interest in pain medicine among clinical specialties with long-standing involvement in pain management.

Methods

We assessed the activity within several specialties in the development of an academic foundation for pain medicine by measuring the frequency of the most common pain topics (1998-2017) in academic journals representing such specialties. The selection of materials for the analysis of publication-based academic interest associated with the development of pain medicine followed a three-step process: (1) Medical specialties, limited to those with accredited fellowship training in pain medicine for more than 20 years – anesthesiology, neurology, physiatry, and psychiatry; (2) Pain topics, based on the degree of topic association with the work of pain clinics – a total of 34 topics; (3) Specialty journals, mostly official journals of societies publishing articles representing all aspects of a specialty – four journals per specialty. Specialty-related academic interest was characterized in two dimensions: its breadth (the number of different topics of interest with distinctly high shares of publications) and its intensity (maximal number of publications on a particular topic).

Results

According to the number of topics with a distinctly high share of articles per topic (≥ 5%), the rank order of specialties was as follows (of 34 topics): anesthesiology (22), physiatry (20), neurology (10), and psychiatry (0). Regarding comparative intensity of interest, anesthesiology has prevailing interest in 16 topics (especially in postoperative pain and pharmacologic pain treatment), physiatry in 13 topics (especially in physical methods of pain therapy), and neurology in one topic (headache disorders).

Conclusion

Publication-based academic interest in pain management was most intensive in two specialties, anesthesiology and physiatry, with anesthesiology being somewhat more multifaceted, especially in the methods of pain treatment.