PAIN+ CPN

About This Site


PAIN+ CPN is a Knowledge Translation initiative of the Chronic Pain Network and was created by the Health Information Research Unit at McMaster University, as part of the McMaster Premium Literature Service, McMasterPLUSTM.

PAIN+ CPN is updated regularly and provides access to current best evidence from health care research to help inform health care professionals, individuals living with pain and caregivers.

All citations are rated, by both health care professionals and patients living with chronic pain, to determine clinical relevance and general interest.




What are the features of PAIN+ CPN?

The current features of PAIN+ CPN include:

  • ratings of each eligible article for clinical relevance and newsworthiness by at least 3 practitioners for each discipline for which the article might be pertinent
  • e-mail alerts about new evidence. Each alert includes MORE clinical ratings and comments, and electronic links to the article's abstract via PubMed (if available) and fulltext article via PubMed or the publisher's site (if available for free)
  • a cumulative searchable database of articles that is continuously updated (from mid-2007 forward)
  • a search interface to access relevant information in the accumulating database
  • evidence-based search strategies for MEDLINE to supplement searches in the cumulated PLUS database when needed
  • download options for citation management
  • links to evidence-based resources



What do the clinical ratings in PAIN+ CPN mean?

The current features of PLUS include:

  • systematic review of over 120 journals (including all Cochrane reviews relevant to pain management) with selection of articles by expert research staff concerning the cause, course, diagnosis, prediction, prevention, and treatment of pain problems, quality improvement and health economics, according to explicit criteria, with high reproducibility and periodic quality assurance checks*
  • ratings of each eligible article for clinical relevance and newsworthiness by at least 3 practitioners for each discipline for which the article might be pertinent

* Wilczynski NL, McKibbon KA, Haynes RB. Enhancing retrieval of best evidence for health care from bibliographic databases: calibration of the hand search of the literature. Medinfo. 2001;10(Pt 1):390-3.