• J Pain · Sep 2003

    Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial

    Interpretation of visual analog scale ratings and change scores: a reanalysis of two clinical trials of postoperative pain.

    • Mark P Jensen, Connie Chen, and Andrew M Brugger.
    • Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Medicine, and Multidisciplinary Pain Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-6490, USA. mjensen@u.washington.edu
    • J Pain. 2003 Sep 1;4(7):407-14.

    AbstractThe visual analog scale (VAS) is one of the most commonly used measures of pain intensity in pain research. However, there remain important unanswered questions concerning interpretation of specific VAS ratings and change scores. To address these questions, we performed a reanalysis of data from 2 randomized controlled trials of postoperative pain (N = 123 and N = 125) to determine the meaning of VAS pain intensity ratings and change scores. The findings suggested that 100-mm VAS ratings of 0 to 4 mm can be considered no pain; 5 to 44 mm, mild pain; 45 to 74 mm, moderate pain; and 75 to 100 mm, severe pain. As predicted, in assessment of the amount of change corresponding to differing levels of pain relief, percentage change in a patient's VAS score was less biased by pretreatment pain than was absolute change score. The findings also suggested that a 33% decrease in pain represents a reasonable standard for determining that a change in pain is meaningful from the patient's perspective.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…