The recent emergence of study into ‘pacing’ or activity regulation in pain management is a welcome addition to our knowledge of this coping strategy. Although pacing has been described and included in many self-help books as well as clinical texts as an effective strategy for people with chronic pain to use, the research base for its use is pretty skinny (see Gill and Brown, 2009). McCracken and Samuels (2007) found that increased use of pacing was associated with higher disability and less acceptance, while Nielson and Jensen (2004) found that it was associated with lower disability in people with fibromyalgia.
The study I’m looking at today, by Karsdorp and Vlaeyen, looked in whether pacing specifically was different from ‘other behavioural strategies assessed with the Chronic Pain Coping Inventory (CPCI), such as guarding, resting, asking for assistance, relaxation, task persistence, exercise/stretch, seeking social support, and coping self-statements.’ The second part of this study looks more closely at whether ‘pacing was associated with physical disability when controlling for pain catastrophizing, pain severity and the other behavioural strategies as measured with CPCI.’
The methodology was pretty simple: a random sample of around 400 patients from the Dutch Fibromyalgia Association responded to being sent a set of questionnaires, a response rate of 68%. 388 women; mean age = 47.58 years, SD = 10.18, range 18–75 years. The mean duration of pain was 160 months (SD = 116.79). Thirty-four percent of the patients had a job and 39% of the patients received income from a disability income insurance.
The questionnaires used were the Chronic Pain Coping Inventory (Jensen, Turner, Romano & Strom, 1995). CPCI comprises 70 items measuring 9 behavioural strategies: Guarding (9 items), Resting (7 items), Asking for Assistance (4 items) , Relaxation (7 items), Task Persistence (6 items), Exercise/Stretch (12 items), Seeking Social Support (8 items), Coping Self-statements (11 items), and Pacing (6 items).
Pain intensity was measured using VAS, catastrophising was measured using the Pain Catastrophising Questionnaire (Sullivan, Bishop & Pivik, 1995), functioning was measured using a fibromyalgia specific Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ-PH) (Burckhardt, Clark & Bennett, 1991), and the Pain Disability Index (Pollard, 1984) were used. Note: these were translated into Dutch for this study.
Thank goodness for statistics! Multiple regression analysis was undertaken – two hierarchical regression analyses were conducted with physical functioning or disability as the dependent variables. The first step included gender, age, and education, pain intensity, and pain catastrophizing. At the second and third step, the 8 CPCI subscales and the pacing subscale were entered, respectively.
What did they find?
At step one in the regression analysis, the demographic variables, pain intensity, and pain catastrophizing explained a significant amount of variance in physical functioning.
Older patients, patients with more severe pain, and patients who tended to catastrophize about pain reported greater physical impairment and more disability.
At step two, the 8 CPCI subscales without the pacing scale reduced the effect of age and pain catastrophizing to zero and significantly explained an additional amount of variance in physical functioning.
At step 3, the pacing subscale did not explain a significant additional amount of variance in physical functioning, leaving, in the final model, patients who avoided physical activities and asked for assistance to manage their pain reported greater physical impairment and more disability, even when controlling for demographic variables, pain intensity, pain catastrophizing and the other behavioural strategies.
So, what does this mean?
Remember, the first question was whether pacing forms a separate scale within the Chronic Pain Coping Inventory, and it seems to – at least in this Dutch version of the CPCI. Pacing is different from guarding, asking for help, avoiding and so on.
The second question was whether pacing was associated with physical disability when controlling for pain catastrophizing, pain severity and the other behavioural strategies as measured with CPCI. The reason for testing this hypothesis was to ascertain whether ‘activity pacing is an adaptive behavioural strategy that could be taught in pain management programs to improve adjustment in FM.’
Zero-order correlations revealed that patients using more pacing strategies reported greater physical impairment and more disability as opposed to less physical disability, so perhaps not such a great strategy to use – but wait: regression analysis demonstrated that pacing did not significantly contribute to physical functioning and disability over and above demographic variables, pain severity, pain catastrophizing and other behavioural strategies reported in chronic pain.
This means that the present study suggests that helping patients to increase pacing strategies in pain management programs may not be a key element in diminishing disability in FM. The authors suggest that the context in which pacing is used may determine whether it’s adaptive or not. Some patients may use pacing as an avoidance strategy, while others may use it, along with graded activity, to increase their ability over time.
The two strongest predictors of disability in this study were guarding and asking for assistance, which are likely to be dysfunctional strategies in FM. This shouldn’t be surprising, as these findings fit with the fear-avoidance model of disability.
Now, some caveats when interpreting this study. Don’t ever confuse correlation with causation - this is a correlational study, so there could very well be some intermediate factor that moderates the effect of activity pacing and disability. The authors quite rightly identify this. Longitudinal and experimental designs are needed to explore the relationship between activity pacing and disability in much more detail. Observational studies are needed to counter the self-report nature of the study instruments in this study. (Of course, we know how difficult observational studies are to carry out!).
Nevertheless, the authors suggest (and I agree based on my experience) pain management programs targeting activity pacing or behavioural strategies in general may not be effective in FM. Instead, therapeutic interventions based on fear-avoidance models specifically targeting paradoxical safety behaviours are likely to be useful in FM. I’m not sure we do exposure therapy as well as we might – and I’m certainly not sure we identify safety behaviours well at all. Perhaps something to explore in the future?
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Karsdorp, P., & Vlaeyen, J. (2009). Active avoidance but not activity pacing is associated with disability in fibromyalgia Pain DOI: 10.1016/j.pain.2009.07.019
J.R. Gill and C.A.A. Brown, Structured review of the evidence for pacing as a chronic pain intervention, Eur J Pain 13 (2009), pp. 214–216.
L.M. McCracken and V.M. Samuel, The role of avoidance, pacing, and other activity patterns in chronic pain, Pain 130 (2007), pp. 119–125.
W.R. Nielson and M.P. Jensen, Relationship between changes in coping and treatment outcome in patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome, Pain 109 (2004), pp. 233–241.
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