Affiliation:
1. Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Inje University Seoul Paik Hospital, Seoul 04551, Republic of Korea
2. Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam 13620, Republic of Korea
3. Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea
Abstract
This study aimed to examine the associated factors of oral glucocorticoid (GC) use in patients with chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) associated with musculoskeletal diseases (MSDs) in South Korea. Moreover, we examined whether oral GC use was associated with long-term mortality in patients with CNCP. This population-based cohort study used data from the national registration database in South Korea. Using a stratified random sampling technique, we extracted the data from 2.5% of adult patients diagnosed with MSDs in 2010. Patients with CNCP-associated MSDs who were prescribed oral GC regularly for ≥30 days were defined as GC users, while the other patients were considered to be non-GC users. A total of 1,804,019 patients with CNCP were included in the final analysis, and 9038 (0.5%) patients were GC users, while 1,794,981 (95.5%) patients were non-GC users. Some factors (old age, comorbid status, pain medication use, and MSD) were associated with GC use among patients with CNCP. Moreover, in the multivariable time-dependent Cox regression model, GC users showed a 1.45-fold higher 10-year all-cause mortality (hazard ratio: 1.45, 95% confidence interval: 1.36–1.54; p < 0.001) than non-GC users. In South Korea, the 10-year all-cause mortality risk increased in the patients with CNCP using GC.