Pain
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Coping responses have been shown to be associated with physical and psychological functioning in patients with chronic pain. Assessment of coping strategies has received increasing attention, with several measures of cognitive and behavioral coping showing promise. One such instrument is the Chronic Pain Coping Inventory (Pain 60 (1995) 203), a 65-item measure of behavioral and cognitive pain coping strategies often targeted as part of multidisciplinary pain treatment. ⋯ This article describes the development of an abbreviated (42-item) CPCI. The results demonstrate very high correlations between the original and abbreviated CPCI scales, as well as comparable internal consistency, test-retest stability, and validity coefficients. The findings support the reliability and validity of the abbreviated CPCI, and suggest that it could be substituted for the CPCI without sacrificing reliability and validity in situations where a briefer measure of coping with chronic pain is preferable.
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Comparative Study
Functional self-efficacy and pain-related disability among older veterans with chronic pain in a primary care setting.
We examined the relationship between functional self-efficacy and pain-related disability in a sample of older veterans with chronic pain. A total of 1045 veterans aged 65 years or older who received primary care at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, CT, were assessed for the presence of chronic pain (i.e. pain due to a non-cancer cause for >/=3 consecutive months in the past 12 months); 303 (26%) screened positive; and 245 (81%) participated. Using a ten-item functional self-efficacy questionnaire (scale: 0-40), participants were categorized into three functional self-efficacy groups: low, score
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Comparative Study
Heat pain thresholds and cerebral event-related potentials following painful CO2 laser stimulation in chronic tension-type headache.
Current opinion concerning the pathophysiology of tension-type headache (TTH) and its related pericranial muscle tenderness proposes a primary role of central sensitization at the level of dorsalhorn/trigeminal nucleus as well as the supraspinal level. Investigation of these phenomena can be conducted using laser-evoked potentials (LEPs), which are objective and quantitative neurophysiological tools for the assessment of pain perception. In the present study we examined features of LEPs, as well as cutaneous heat-pain thresholds to laser stimulation, in relation to the tenderness of pericranial muscles in chronic TTH resulting from pericranial muscle disorder, during a pain-free phase. ⋯ The TTS scores at almost all pericranial sites were higher in TTH patients than in normal controls. The amplitude of the N2a-P2 complex elicited by stimulation of the pericranial zone was greater in TTH patients than in controls; the amplitude increase was significantly associated with the TTS score. Our findings suggest that pericranial tenderness may be a primary phenomenon that precedes headache, and is mediated by a greater pain-specific hypervigilance at the cortical level.
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The aim of this study was to examine how men and women observe experimentally induced pain in male and female participants and to specifically determine the accuracy of observed pain ratings, the possible interactions between the sex of the viewer and the sex of the individual being observed, and the influence of gender role expectations on observed pain ratings. The sample comprised 29 participants (15 females). They each completed a battery of psychological questionnaires and viewed a presentation of 10 randomly ordered video clips. ⋯ When endurance expectations were controlled, sex of the viewer no longer significantly predicted observed pain ratings. The 'willingness to report pain' variable was not a significant predictor of observed pain ratings. Our results show that women are perceived to have more pain than men, that there was a tendency by both sexes to underestimate pain in others, but men showed even greater underestimation, and that gender role expectations of pain endurance given by the video observers accounted for substantial variance in their ratings of pain in the videos.
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Comparative Study
Selective attentional bias, conscious awareness and the fear of pain.
It has been suggested that healthy individuals with a high fear of pain possess a selective attentional bias in favour of pain-related material. However, evidence is limited since only a few studies have been conducted to date. In addition, these studies have not yet examined whether such attentional biases are relatively automatic, and so are outside conscious control. ⋯ Furthermore, we also found that when stimuli were masked, this bias was reversed. Neither effect was found amongst participants high in the fear of pain. Together, these findings suggest that the ability to orient away from pain-related stimuli may be under conscious control in low fearful people, whereas such a mechanism does not seem to exist in those high in the fear of pain.