Description of Chronic Pain in Emergencies Room and Medical Care Modalities

The rate of patients with chronic pain (CP) is 40% in patients with acute pain in emergency department (ED). Patients with CP come more frequently to ED than patients without CP. Reasons for their visit to ED are often in relation with this CP. Few studies have been interested to management modalities of these patients in ED. The investigators are going to realize a prospective observational study in one center. The hypothesis is that patients with chronic pain are less satisfied of ED management that patients without CP.

Chronic pain is defined by a daily pain since more than 3 months. CP is different of acute pain because of their mechanisms, treatments and therapeutic objectives. CP is associated with an alteration of quality of life with psychological, social and economic consequences. The prevalence of CP in France is 15%. In ED, the rate of CP in patients with acute pain was around 40%. Patients with CP come more frequently to ED than patients without CP. Their use of care structures, particularly ED, is all the more frequent that their disability is important. The satisfaction of these patients in ED is associated with age, nature of pain, wait duration, realisation of imaging, and administration of painkillers and relieving of pain. The reasons why these patients go to ED were pain exacerbation, inadequate strategy of coping, severity of disease and sometime despair associated with stress or anxiety. Currently the investigators do not know if these managements in ED are adequate or not. And finally the investigators do not know whether the satisfaction about their ED management is different from patients without CP. The investigators are going to collect data about all patients admitted in ED with the objective to compare the satisfaction between patients with CP and patients without CP. The follow up will be restricted to the area of ED. The last data will be collected just before the exit from ED.