A recent study revealed certain consistent risk factors of persistent postsurgical pain after thoracic and breast surgeries. In this study, the researchers aimed to meta-analyze and systematically review the literature on persistent postsurgical pain risk factors following thoracic and breast surgeries.

Electronic databases including PsycINFO, Scopus, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Ovid Medline, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) were searched to find out the relevant studies. Study screening was conducted independently by two authors with risk of bias evaluation, data extraction and inclusion-exclusion criteria. The literature search provided 5584 articles.

For each surgical group, an analysis of the data was done separately and meta-analyzed where possible. Notably, data from 143 thoracic surgery articles and 126 breast surgery articles were taken into consideration for performing the meta-analysis. In thoracic surgery, moderate to severe acute postsurgery pain, presurgery pain, surgical approach, wound complications, younger age, major procedure, female sex and hypertension were related to persistent postsurgical pain.

Radiotherapy, smoking, axillary lymph node dissection, presurgery pain, moderate to severe acute postsurgery pain, diabetes, younger age, higher body mass index, depression, reoperation and anxiety were the major factors linked with a greater risk of persistent postsurgical pain in case of breast surgery.

An insight into the risk factors that raise persistent postsurgical pain risk will enable the practitioners in the selective allocation of resources for optimizing perioperative care in high-risk patients. It will also assist in the development of risk-stratified and targeted interventions to prevent persistent postsurgical pain.