Is chronic pain related with the postsurgical scar tissue in women?

Abstract

Aim: Chronic persistent pain (CPP) is an important public health problem and its pathophysiology and the risk factors are still not clear. Scar tissues forming after any type of injury, trauma, and surgery may lead to chronic pain. In this case-control study, we aimed to evaluate surgical scar tissues can be related to forming CPP in our patient population. Methods: To assess the relation between surgery and CPP, two common chronic pain diseases were examined; fibromyalgia (FMS) as the most common non-mechanical CPP, and chronic low back pain (CLBP) as the most common mechanical CPP. For this purpose, 75 FMS, 57 CLBP patients and 47 healthy controls were recruited. All of the participants were examined, their demographic characteristics, symptoms, medical history of surgeries, and comorbid diseases were reported. Results: The frequency of surgical procedures was similar in both patient groups (p>0.05), but were higher than the controls in both patients’ group (p<0.001). The mean pain VAS score was similar in both patient groups (p=0.825). These scores were higher in the patients with history of the multiple surgical procedures than the patients with history of single surgical procedure (p=0.043) which was not related to the type of surgical procedure (p>0.05). Conclusion: Scar tissues after surgery may cause a local or distant chronic pain. Chronic pain was more frequent in patients who experienced multiple operations. © Istanbul Medeniyet University Faculty of Medicine.