Cited by 571Emergency and Acute Care StudiesTrauma and Emergency Care StudiesEmergency Medicine Education and Research

The high prevalence of pain in emergency medical care

Cordell, William H., Keene, Kelly K., Giles, Beverly K., Jones, James B., Jones, James H., Brizendine, Edward J.·2002·The American Journal of Emergency Medicine

Abstract

Although there is a widely held belief that pain is the number 1 complaint in emergency medical care, few studies have actually assessed the prevalence of pain in the emergency department (ED). We conducted an analysis of secondary data by using explicit data abstraction rules to determine the prevalence of pain in the ED and to classify the location, origin, and duration of the pain. This retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted at an urban teaching hospital in Indianapolis, IN. Charts from 1,665 consecutive ED visits during a 7-day period were reviewed. Pain was defined as the word pain or a pain equivalent word (including aching, burning, and discomfort) recorded on the chart. Of the 1,665 visits, 61.2% had pain documented anywhere on the chart, 34.1% did not have pain, and 4.7% were procedures. Pain was a chief complaint for 52.2% of the visits. This high prevalence of pain has important implications for the allocation of resources as well as educational and research efforts in emergency medical care.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1053/ajem.2002.32643

Cites

15 of 15 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Patients with chronic pain have a considerably higher level of use of emergency and unscheduled care than patients without chronic pain.

    “They also have a considerably higher level of use of emergency and unscheduled care than patients without chronic pain [20, 21] risking a care plan dictated by short-term decision making rather than comprehensive oversight of their pain as a whole [22].”

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Cordell, W. H., Keene, K. K., Giles, B. K., Jones, J. B., Jones, J. H., & Brizendine, E. J.
Affiliations
Indiana University Indianapolis (US)
Venue
The American Journal of Emergency Medicine
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2002-05
Volume
20
Issue
3
Pages
165-169
ISSN
0735-6757 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2087559496
Cited by
571
References
15
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 35 · 2017: 37 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 31 · 2014: 38 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 16
FWCI
9.29
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • The American Journal of Emergency Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Emergency Medicine › Emergency and Acute Care Studies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Emergency Medicine › Trauma and Emergency Care Studies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Emergency Medicine › Emergency Medicine Education and Research
Keywords
pain prevalence, emergency department visits, chief complaint, pain localization, pain duration, pain etiology, resource allocation
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Child, Child, Preschool, Cross-Sectional Studies, Emergency Service, Hospital, Female, Humans, Indiana, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Male, Middle Aged, Pain, Pain Measurement, Retrospective Studies, Observer Variation, Prevalence

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review