Knee Arthroplasty Pain Coping Skills Training (KASTPain): A Randomized Trial

Approximately 25% of patients following knee arthroplasty have disabling pain following apparently successful surgery. Recent research suggests that pain catastrophizing plays a key role in determining which patients with knee arthroplasty have a poor outcome. In addition to this evidence, a substantial literature suggests that pain coping skills training is effective for patients with chronic pain but the intervention has not been studied for surgical patients with severe arthritic knee pain. We designed the Knee Arthroplasty pain coping Skills Training (KASTPain) trial to address this research need. This Phase III three-arm randomized clinical trial seeks to combine a strong and diverse group of researchers to examine an important and understudied area in the joint arthroplasty literature. The KASTPain trial will be the first to examine the utility of a perioperative pain coping intervention for this substantial population of patients.