Influence of Pain Self‐Efficacy and Gender on Disability in Postoperative Cervical Myelopathy

Background: Pain self-efficacy and gender may influence disability in patients with musculoskeletal dis-orders. The direct and interactive influence of pain self-efficacy and gender on postoperative disability with degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is unclear. Aim: This study aimed to determine the effects of age, pain, and pain self-efficacy on disability postop-eratively in patients with DCM, and explore whether these effects differ by gender. Method: A total of 180 participants who underwent DCM surgery were consecutively recruited. The following were evaluated: (1) demographic/descriptive data (age, gender, diagnosis, surgery date, pro-cedure); (2) numerical rating scale pain and dysesthesia intensity; (3) Neck Disability Index; and Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis and simple slope analysis deter-mined the effect of patients' biologic and psychosocial factors, and their interaction in terms of disability. Results: The responses of 82 participants were analyzed. The hierarchical multiple regression final model analysis determined 57.1% participant disability variance; gender ( B = 3.388; p < .01); pain ( B = 3.574; < .01); pain self-efficacy ( B = -0.229; p < .01); age and gender ( B = -0.201; p < .05); pain and gender ( B = -3.749; p < .01); pain self-efficacy and gender ( B = -0.304; p < .01) were significantly associated with disability. Simple slope test indicated that women showed weaker pain associations and stronger age and pain self-efficacy associations with disability than men. Conclusions: Pain self-efficacy improvement should be focused on after surgery in patients with DCM, especially women. (c) 2022 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.