Parsimonious Collection of Pain Descriptors: Classification and Calibration by Pain Patients

Descriptors of Pain Sensation: A Dual Hierarchical Model of Latent Structure

“…The organization of descriptors of pain sensation was based on a 3-point decision rule applied to classification data from college students 10,22 and later to data from a sample of chronic pain patients. 11 Across these studies, it was also shown that these descriptors could be reliably rank-ordered in terms of their implied intensity.…”

“…Nurses and doctors across primary care and emergency settings often ask patients to describe their pain. 1,2,21 In recent years, a select number of relatively unambiguous and easily understandable pain descriptors has been identified and combined into a new assessment tool called the Pain Descriptor System (PDS 9,11 ). The PDS has 36 items, with 3 separate items in each of the 8 sensory subcategories, each of the 3 affective subcategories, and the single overall intensity category.…”

Defining Pain: Natural Semantic Metalanguage Meets IASP: A Comment on Wierzbicka’s “Is Pain a Human Universal? A Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspective on Pain”

“…Her criticisms echo some of the reports from psychometric studies of the MPQ. However, the methodology pioneered by Melzack has been refined to produce a more parsimonious pain descriptor system (Fernandez, Krusz, & Hall, 2011). Wierzbicka is correct that MPQ questions about the temporal pattern of pain may befuddle children, and this calls for Defining Pain: Natural Semantic Metalanguage Meets IASP: A Comment on Wierzbicka's "Is Pain a Human Universal?…”

Modifiable motion graphics for capturing sensations

“…The ability to associate a pain quality descriptor to a specific painful or non-painful sensation is limited by self-awareness, language skills, and prior experiences [27,28]. Despite these limitations, clinical assessment questionnaires, such as the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) or painDETECT [29][30][31][32][33][34], use pain quality descriptors routinely.…”

“…Therefore, communicating and quantifying changes in non-painful sensations is clinically relevant. However, pain and non-painful quality descriptors are difficult for patients, as the meaning of words can be ambiguous and differ across cultures [27,45]. Therefore, assessment tools that can go beyond the use of words to qualify and quantify changes in non-painful sensations, such as tingling or numbness, may lead to a better understanding of a patients' condition, symptom progression, and underlying pathophysiology.…”