MSD/General Pain
Goulet codes
The ICD codes used to identify the Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD) Cohort can be used to phenotype pain populations for collaborative pain research. The MSD Cohort was created in 2016 by Goulet et. al to characterize variation in pain, comorbidities, treatment, and outcomes among patients receiving Veterans Health Administration care across demographic groups, geographic regions, and facilities. Several PMC trials use the ICD codes to identify their target populations (with trial-specific modifications).
Goulet et. al. using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth or Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification diagnostic codes (ICD-9-CM/ICD-10-CM). Full list and crosswalk available in hyperlink below.
- a. Abdominal and bowel pain
- b. Back Pain
- c. Bone infections
- d. Fibromyalgia and wide-spread muscle pain
- e. Fractures, contusions, sprains and strains
- f. Headache
- g. Infectious arthritic diseases
- h. Limb extremity pain, joint pain and arthritic disorders
- i. Musculoskeletal chest pain
- j. Neck pain
- k. Neuropathy
- l. Orofacial, ear, and temporomandibular disorder pain
- m. Other painful conditions
- n. Systemic disorders or diseases causing pain
- o. Urogenital, pelvic and menstrual pain
Goulet JL, Kerns RD, Blair M, Becker WC, Brennan P, Burgess DJ, Carroll CM, Dobscha S, Driscoll MA, Fenton BT, Fraenkel L, Hzaskell SG, Heapy AA, Higgins DM, Hoff RA, Hwang U, Justice AC, Piette JD, Sinnott P, Wandner L, Womack JA, Brandt CA. The musculoskeletal diagnosis cohort: examining pain and pain care among veterans. Pain. 2016 Aug;157(8):1696-1703. doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000567.PMID: 27023420; PMCID: PMC4949131.
CROSSWALK TO ICD-10
The MSD/General Pain (Goulet et. al codes) were cross walked from ICD-9 to ICD-10. The authors refined the provisional ICD-9-CM diagnostic codes to identify pain-related diagnostic clusters recently published by Von Korff et al. (2016). They focused on ensuring that the range of conditions commonly contributing to acute and chronic pain were represented and the groupings of diagnoses enable researchers to differentiate conditions. Corresponding ICD-10-CM diagnostic codes were identified. They evaluated the resulting crosswalk by assessing the stability of prevalence estimates of the diagnostic clusters across the ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM transition, along with corresponding patient socio-demographic correlates, in three distinct health care systems: 1)Kaiser Permanente Northwest (KPNW), 2) Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound (GHC), which became Kaiser Permanente Washington (KPWA) in January 2017), and 3) Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Results of this work were used to confirm and supplement the original MSD codes to create the final PMC3 recommended list of General/MDS pain. Github respository to crosswalk file is here.
Mayhew M, DeBar LL, Deyo RA, Kerns RD, Goulet JL, Brandt CA, Von Korff M. Development and Assessment of Crosswalk Between ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM to Identify Patients with Common Pain Conditions. J Pain. 2019 Dec;20(12):1429-1445. doi: 10.1016/j.jpain.2019.05.006. Epub 2019 May 23. PMID: 31129316; PMCID:PMC6874733.
