Articles: pain-measurement.
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Comparative Study
Reliability of pain scales in the assessment of literate and illiterate patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
The assessment of a measure of chronic pain, should be reliable, valid and sensitive to change. Our study evaluated the reliability of 3 pain scales, visual analogue scale (VAS), numerical rating scale (NRS) and verbal rating scale (VRS) in literate and illiterate patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Patients with RA attending an outpatient rheumatology clinic were interviewed and asked to score their pain levels on the 3 pain scales. ⋯ Ninety-one patients were studied (25 illiterate and 66 literate). The Pearson product moment correlation between first and second assessment was 0.937 for VAS, 0.963 for NRS and 0.901 for VRS in the literate patient group and 0.712 for VAS, 0.947 for NRS and 0.820 for VRS in the illiterate patient group. These results indicate that the NRS has the higher reliability in both groups of patients.
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The aim of this paper is to study the quality of verbal description and its diagnostic value in neuropathic pain. The verbal description of pain as assessed by a French adjective list questionnaire (QDSA) is compared between a group of 100 patients with neuropathic pain and a mixed group of 97 chronic benign and cancer non-neuropathic pain patients. Seventeen descriptors of the 61 QDSA descriptors have a significant intergroup frequency difference. ⋯ Seven descriptors from the discriminant analysis function correctly assign 77% of neuropathic pain patients and 81% of the non-neuropathic pain patients. In a second neuropathic pain group of 32 patients, the discriminant function coefficient permits correct diagnostic categorization in 66% of the cases. Implications for clinical practice and trials are discussed.
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Comparative Study
A comparison of adolescents' and nurses' postoperative pain ratings and perceptions.
To examine the relationship between adolescents' subjective and nurses' objective pain ratings and their perceptions of each other's evaluation. ⋯ The relationship between patients' and nurses' pain assessment was moderate. Adolescents perceived that nurses' know how much pain they were experiencing. Nurses expected adolescents to rate pain higher than the nurses themselves would rate it.
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Both the Harris and the Charnley hip evaluation forms were applied to 191 ingrowth-type total hip arthroplasties in an attempt to determine the effectiveness of the hip score as an indicator of success following arthroplasty. The Harris form demonstrated significantly lower pain scores than the Charnley form and, consequently, failed patients more often due to pain. However, it is important to note that 32% of the hips that failed due to pain on the Harris form did not fail due to total score. This inconsistency prompts the authors to state that when using a hip form to evaluate the performance of a prosthesis, especially one of the ingrowth type, it is important to consider not only the average total score but also the percentage of patients still experiencing significant pain.