Women reported neck pain due to cervical disc degeneration at 1.38 times the rate of men in a study of adult patients treated at Loyola Medicine’s Pain Management Center, Maywood, USA.
The study by Meda Raghavendra and Joseph Holtman, of Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine in Palm Springs, USA.
The findings add to the growing body of research on the ways in which men and women experience pain. Previous studies have found that females are more likely to be treated at pain clinics for chronic pain, and that certain painful conditions—such as migraine headaches and fibromyalgia—are more common in women. Various explanations have been proposed, including the belief that men may be less willing to report pain.
The Loyola study included 3,337 patients who were treated at Loyola’s Pain Management Center. Sixty-one per cent were female.
Raghavendra and Holtman conducted a similar study of patients who were treated at Loyola’s Pain Management Center for lumbosacral degenerative disc disease. The prevalence in females, %, was slightly higher than the prevalence in males, 11%, but this difference was not statistically significant.
Raghavendra is an associate professor and Holtman is a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Holtman is also program director of Pain Management.
