Background and aims 
Chronic pain is a highly prevalent and complex medical condition, which seriously and often irreversibly affects patient’s quality of life. Several risk factors for pain chronification are known and stratified approaches to secondary prevention (i.e. avoid the transition from acute to chronic pain) have been developed. However, in order to determine the resources needed for their implementation, we need to evaluate the number of patients at low, moderate or high risk of developing chronic pain. 

Methods
Data were collected by 292 medical students, during their one-month general practice rotation. Each day, the third patient was asked to provide demographical data and fill in the short version of the Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire (OMPSQ), a validated tool to assess pain chronification risk. 

Results
 5815 patients were approached and 3882 agreed to participate (66.6% response rate). Of those, 1069 (27.5%) had no pain and 1929 (49.7%) had chronic pain. 884 patients (22.7%) reported pain lasting less than 3 months. After excluding cancer-related pain and incomplete OMSPQ, we analyzed data from 783 patients. 397 (51%) reported cervical or lumbar pain and 386 (49%) pain elsewhere. According to their OMPSQ score, 417 (55.6%) were at moderate and 212 (27.1%) at high risk for the development of chronic pain.    

Conclusion 
17 % of patients in our total sample suffered from acute or subacute pain and were at moderate or high risk for pain chronification. As the OMSPQ has only been validated for patients suffering from cervical or lumbar pain, these results must be interpreted with caution. Still, given the high number of patients concerned, it is likely that setting up prevention programs will require significant resources and that they will have to be implemented at the primary care level.

AN EVALUATION OF THE PROPORTION OF PRIMARY CARE PATIENTS AT RISK OF DEVELOPING CHRONIC PAIN IN FRENCH-SPEAKING BELGIUM