• Ergun Oksuz, Esra Tuba Mutlu, and Simten Malhan.
• Family Medicine Unit, Medico Social Health Center, Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey. eoksuz@baskent.edu.tr
• Pain Pract. 2007 Sep 1; 7 (3): 265-73.

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to explore how Turkish nonmalignant pain patients described their pain and how the language of pain used by Turkish patients compares to the language found in common pain assessment tools.ObjectivePain is influenced by a combination of ethnic, cultural, psychological, and social variants. In the Turkish language, six words are central to pain-like experiences: ağri (pain), aci (suffering), sizi (aching), sanci (colic), istirap (agony), and dert (torture). We assessed discriminant characteristics of the Turkish translation of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ).MethodsChronic clinical nonmalignant pain patients (n = 319, 35.7% males, 64.3% females) were questioned with the Turkish translation of the MPQ. Pain symptoms were categorized as headache (33.5%), musculoskeletal pain (33.2%), visceral pain (18.8%), and low back pain (14.5%).ResultsThe visceral pain group had the highest mean value in the evaluative subscale (2.6 +/- 1.9). Descriptions used for sensory subscale included throbbing, sharp, aching, and tingling, while affective subscale words included tiring, suffocating, sickening, cruel, and wretched. In all pain groups, frequently chosen words for the miscellaneous subscale were nagging and penetrating.ConclusionPain descriptors were identified for each type of pain. This is, to our knowledge, the first assessment of the Turkish translation of the MPQ in nonmalignant pain patients.

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