Effects of COVID-19 in Chronic Pain

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on pain, stress, sleep and quality of life in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain and the relationships between them. In this cross-sectional study, 100 volunteer patients aged 18-65 years with chronic (longer than 3 months) musculoskeletal pain were included. Age, gender, body-mass index (BMI) and systemic diseases of the participants were recorded as demographic data. Data were collected regarding the area of the body where pain is most dominant in the musculoskeletal system and how long the pain has been in these area, whether there is routine use of analgesics before and after the pandemic and the amount if any, whether the person or the person's relatives have a history of COVID-19, whether exercising regularly before and after the pandemic. Afterwards, the participants were asked to evaluate their general pain severity and global well-being assesment with the visual analog scale (VAS) in the pre-pandemic period and in the last month. For pain severity, the patients marked their pain severity on a line of 10 centimeters (cm) with the starting point (0) expressing no pain, and the end point (10) expressing the most severe pain experienced in life; for patient's global assesment the patients marked their global assesment on a line of 10 centimeters (cm) with the starting point (0) expressing very good, and the end point (10) expressing very bad. The distance between the point marked by the patient and the starting point was measured. The higher the measured value meant the greater the severity of the patient's pain and the worse the patient's global assessment [11]. Subsequently, the patients were asked to answer questions on the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) scales.