High-resolution, field approaches for assessing pain: Ecological Momentary Assessment

An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study of Pain Intensity Variability: Ascertaining Extent, Predictors, and Associations With Quality of Life, Interference and Health Care Utilization Among Individuals Living With Chronic Low Back Pain

“…These findings are important because they contribute to a growing body of literature highlighting the need to consider multiple dimensions of the pain experience beyond average pain scores 72 . EMAs allow for the exploration of various dimensions of the pain experience unfolding within-day in the real world, but heterogeneity in methodologies across studies to implement them makes it difficult to compare results across studies.…”

“…Increased pain intensity variability has been shown to be positively associated with pain recall bias 73 . Given the well-known peak-and-end effect 3,37,83 that influences recall bias, measuring pain as a dynamic process in real-time using methodologies such as ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers significant advantages 71,72 .…”

Validating a biosignature-predicting placebo pill response in chronic pain in the settings of a randomized controlled trial

“…(3) Under the current study design, in both phase 1 and phase 2 studies, we observed no statistically meaningful change in pain in the NoTx arm over many weeks. This is in contrast with meta-analytic results, 31 probably mainly because of repeated assessment of current pain which should diminish recall biases, 10,47,54 as well as inclusion of at least 1 week of baseline pain assessment. If one assumes that NoTx pain does not differ in intensity from initial enrollment, then the placebo effect size can be directly estimated from extant literature.…”

Heterogeneity in temporal dynamics of pain and affect among individuals with chronic back pain and associations with risk for future opioid-related problems

“…Intensive sampling approaches such as EMA have shown significant promise for realtime assessment of pain experiences in participant's daily lives [40,49,51]. The vast majority of research in this area has focused on what is true for individuals on average (i.e., fixed effects).…”

“…Within-person relationships can be assessed using intensive longitudinal sampling approaches such as Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) that allow for repeated assessments within patient's daily lives via portable devices [40,49,51]. EMA studies have found that momentary increases in pain are associated with concurrent increased NA, and vice versa, across several chronic pain conditions [20].…”