The Italian pain questionnaire

Abstract

In order to overcome the cross-cultural semantic barriers related to the literal translation of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) in non-English speaking areas, an Italian Pain Questionnaire (IPQ) has been developed, based on the 3 factorial structures proposed by Melzack and Torgerson: sensory, affective and evaluative. A group of 30 normal subjects (15 doctors and 15 university students) was used to define 5 anchor words of the intensity verbal scale by means of a visual analogue scale, and a 5-point Present Pain Intensity (PPI) verbal scale was derived. For the semantic key, a first group of 80 subjects (30 university students and patients, respectively, and 20 doctors) was asked to sort out appropriate pain descriptors from 203 pain-related words with the help of clinical literature and Italian dictionaries. Subsequently, a second group of 80 subjects (of identical structural composition) was asked to allocate the 56 words previously chosen on the basis of word frequencies (at least 45%) to the most appropriate category in the Italianized MPQ. Testees were then asked to assign an intensity value to each word, using a VAS scale. The final pain vocabulary was formed from those words, which reflected a statistically significant intensity change (P less than 0.05) within each group. The IPQ comprises 42 pain descriptors, distributed into 3 major classes (sensory, affective and evaluative) and 16 subclasses. It represents the most parsimonious, meaningful and idiomatic set of Italian pain descriptors, providing quantitative information that can be treated statistically, yet preserving a close structural parallel with the MPQ.

Systematic review of cross-cultural adaptations of McGill Pain Questionnaire reveals a paucity of clinimetric testing

“…Another argument for this approach is the view that some languages have more or less pain descriptors than the English language. Indeed, our review provides some evidence for this view as the adapted questionnaires vary quite widely in the number of words used to describe pain, ranging from 42 [12] to 176 [48] items. Although the creators of these adaptations consider this method as the most adequate, it does pose problems with scoring and interpretation of research trials that have used these questionnaires as an outcome measure.…”

“…The process used to develop these new versions of the MPQ has not been uniform. Some authors have used a cross-cultural adaptation approach [8] (e.g., the Turkish [9] and Korean [10] SF-MPQ), others have constructed a new questionnaire following similar methodological procedures to those used in the development of the original MPQ (e.g., the Finnish Pain Questionnaire [11] and the Italian Pain Questionnaire [12]) and some versions [13e15] have used a ''mix'' of the two procedures described above. Regardless of the approach used, the main objective of the cross-cultural adaptation is to develop equivalent versions of the MPQ that enable clinicians and researchers to assess…”

Multidimensional evaluation of pain during early and late labor: a comparison of nulliparous and multiparous women

“…The pain descriptors from the Italian translation of the McGill Pain Questionnaire were used. 9 The investigator instructed the parturient to select only those pain descriptors that characterized what was being experienced at the time the questionnaire was administered and, if needed, assisted the parturient in understanding the meaning of the pain descriptors. 8 In addition, all the parturients were asked to report intensity of pain at the peak of a uterine contraction on a VAPS and PPI.…”

Effects of intravenous zoledronic acid and oral ibandronate on early changes in markers of bone turnover in patients with bone metastases from non-small cell lung cancer

“…The pain scale has verbal descriptors (0, no pain; 1, mild pain; 2, discomforting pain; 3, distressing pain; 4, horrible pain; 5, excruciating pain), and the patients were asked to classify the average pain level during the previous 24 h. We used a translated form of the McGill-Melzack questionnaire to which the ''reconstruction-based methodology'' was applied [18]. Analgesic consumption was based on the average daily quantities taken by the patient during the previous week, and assigned oral morphine equivalents before analysis [19].…”