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The medical profession often is castigated these days for undertreating patients with pain or failing to treat them at all. Forgotten is the fact that some patients with pain actually prefer to forgo treatment, as a prospective survey of emergency department (ED) patients makes clear.
Of 392 patients (50% male; 76% white; mean age, 39) who presented to a U.S. suburban ED with painful conditions, 193 (49%) stated that they did not want pain medication, for reasons that included tolerability of pain (47%), analgesia already taken at home (11%), and not wanting to become groggy (7%). Patients who wanted analgesia had higher mean pain scores than did those who declined, but, on multivariate analysis, no significant differences emerged between th…