• Panagiota Sykioti, Panagiotis Zis, Athina Vadalouca, Ioanna Siafaka, Eriphili Argyra, Didier Bouhassira, Evmorfia Stavropoulou, and Nikolaos Karandreas.
• 1st Anaesthesiology Clinic, Pain Relief and Palliative Care Unit, Aretaieion University Hospital, University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
• Pain Pract. 2015 Sep 1; 15 (7): 627-32.

BackgroundThe Douleur Neuropathique 4 questionnaire (DN4) was developed by the French Neuropathic Pain Group and is a simple and objective tool, primarily designed to screen for neuropathic pain. The aim of our study is to validate the DN4 in the Greek language.MethodsThe study was set up as a prospective observational study. Two pain specialists independently examined patients and diagnosed them with neuropathic, nociceptive, or mixed pain, according to the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) definitions. A third and a fourth physician administered the DN4 questionnaire to the patients.ResultsOut of the 237 patients who met our inclusion criteria and had identical diagnoses regarding the type of pain, 123 were diagnosed with neuropathic, 59 with nociceptive, and 55 with mixed pain. Among patients with identical diagnoses of neuropathic or nociceptive pain, using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.92. A cutoff point of equal or greater than 4 resulted in a sensitivity of 93% and a specificity of 78%. Among patients suffering from pain with neuropathic element (neuropathic or mixed pain) or pain with no neuropathic element (nociceptive pain), using a ROC curve analysis, the AUC was 0.89. A cutoff point of equal or greater than 4 resulted in a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 78%.ConclusionThe Greek version of DN4 is a valid tool for discriminating between neuropathic and nociceptive pain conditions in daily practice.© 2014 World Institute of Pain.

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