The purpose of this clinical research study by TMT Inc. is to find out the commonest locations in the body where people experience chronic pain, and to find out the nature of the pain symptoms related to each pain location.

You are eligible for the study if you meet all of the following conditions: 1) You have chronic pain (constant or recurring pain lasting more than 30 days and causing significant discomfort or limitation of activity). 2) You are at least 18 years of age (and of legal age of consent in the state you live in). 3) Your pain has not resulted in a workman’s compensation case and has also not resulted in a lawsuit. 4) You are not institutionalized (e.g., a nursing home resident). And, 5) you are not currently participating in another clinical study.

We do not provide medical advice to you.  We will give you the Internet addresses of some reputable sites that provide medical information to the public (for example, sites run by the National Institutes of Health of the US government, or by major medical schools) where you can read up on those diagnoses if you wish to do so. In addition, if you are eligible for the study, give informed consent for the study, and return a completed pain questionnaire, we will provide you with some more detailed information on pain. However, please realize that the possible diagnoses provided may not include the cause of your own pain, and that a reliable diagnosis can only be obtained by contacting your own health care provider.

Your mailing address, email address and any personally identifying information you provide in the pain survey will be kept confidential and not provided to any outside parties to the extent permissible by law. Data in submitted questionnaires are sent over the Internet using Secured Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol that transmits your communications over the Internet in an encrypted form so that no unauthorized person can read it. SSL ensures that the information is sent, unchanged, only to the server computer you intended to send it to (online shopping sites frequently use SSL technology to safeguard your credit card information).

If you decide to take part in the study, you will receive no unsolicited contacts of any type. Group data but not data on an individual person may be published in a medical journal, on this Internet site, or elsewhere.

Enrollment will begin in late 2004. We expect the study to be complete in 6 months, but we might continue enrollment for a somewhat longer period. We will place a notice on TMT’s masterdocs.com Internet site that enrollment is complete when that is the case. If you take part in the study, you may want to check the site from time to time to see if we have posted the results or to hear about other clinical studies that TMT may do.

The Investigator for this study is Colin R. Taylor, M.D. who may be contacted c/o TMT Inc., 196 E 75th Street (Suite 18A), New York, NY 10021, USA, or by email (crtaylor@masterdocs.com).

Thank you for your interest in this clinical research study. We hope that the results will help with diagnosis for patients suffering from chronic pain. When the study is complete, we will post group data and conclusions of the study on this Internet site (masterdocs.com) so that you can see how your pain compares to the pain of other people with chronic pain.

Note: If very large numbers of people are accessing the masterdocs.com Internet site at the same time, you may find it takes a long time for the Web pages to load.  If so, trying again at an off-peak period may be much faster.