A comparison of the Hopkins Pain Rating Instrument with standard visual analogue and verbal descriptor scales in patients with cancer pain

Abstract

A self-contained, portable, pain rating instrument that provides an immediate result for documentation purposes was developed to improve pain assessment in cancer patients. The Hopkins Pain Rating Instrument (HPRI) is a 5 x 20 cm plastic visual analogue scale (VAS) with a sliding marker that moves within a groove that measures 10 cm. The side facing the patient resembles a traditional VAS while the opposite side is marked in cm to quantify pain intensity. This psychometric study, which employed a descriptive correlational design, evaluated the reliability and validity of the HPRI by comparing it with a traditional VAS and verbal descriptor scale (VDS). Outpatients with and without pain and inpatients with pain rated their major pain site with the three instruments, which were presented in random order. This was followed by a mental status exam and re-rating of pain with the same instruments to assess test--retest reliability. Completing the study were 71 patients with a variety of cancers and a mean age of 52.8 years. Of these patients, 68% had pain and 54% were receiving opioid analgesics. The most common pain sites were the back, leg, and epigastric areas. On initial and repeat testing, there were high correlations between the HPRI and the VAS (r = 0.99, P less than 0.0001) and the VDS (r = 0.85, P less than 0.0001). The correlation coefficients for test--retest reliability for the HPRI, VAS, and VDS were 0.97, 0.97, and 0.94 (P less than 0.001).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Patient and Clinical Variables Account for Changes in Health-related Quality of Life and Symptom Burden as Treatment Outcomes in Colorectal Cancer: A Longitudinal Study

“…Patients were asked to indicate the intensity of pain by moving an adjustable marker along the scale. Reliability and validity have been demonstrated satisfactorily for VAS pain (Grossman et al, 1992).…”

Nasolabial symmetry and esthetics in cleft lip and palate: analysis of 3D facial images

“…The advantage of the VAS is that biases toward preferred values that are found when using categorical or equal-appearing interval scales are avoided [41,42]. Furthermore, the use of VAS produces more objective reproducible and reliable results [43]; VAS is also more sensitive [41,42] than categorical rating scales with or without verbal descriptors [32,44]. However, the disadvantage of VAS is that the obtained numeric values cannot be connected with certain categories or ordered scales, because the data are usually not normally distributed [45,46].…”

Gender and Ethnic Differences in Cancer Pain Experience

“…For statistical purposes, the terms were assigned a numerical value from 0 to 5 (0=no pain, 5=worst possible pain). In a study among 71 cancer patients aged 18-85 years with and without pain, the correlation coefficients for test-retest reliability of the VDS was 0.94 (Grossman et al, 1992).…”