ABSTRACT
Unfortunately, even the “best” numbers from the most prestigious sources are only estimates. It is simply impossible to develop precise numbers, for many reasons. To begin with, we do not have a national health registration system, or a comprehensive national health database to track the numbers. Instead, the millions of people in this country are treated by a patchwork quilt of HMOs, private physicians, county hospitals, student health centers, etc., and we do not yet have a system to correlate the statistics from all these disparate entities. But even if we had a national system for tracking all complaints reported to physicians, we would not be able to account for those people who do not report their pain, preferring to ignore it, to self-treat, or to seek help from alternative health providers. To complicate matters more, there are differing ways of grouping types of pain. For example, some organizations have a very broad definition of arthritis, yielding
a greater number of arthritis sufferers, while other groups use a narrower, more restrictive definition that produces a smaller tally. One estimate of the number of people suffering from chronic pain will include those with cancer pain, while another will not.
