Open Access(626) Diagnosis‐Specific Norms for the 0 to 10 Pain Scale
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
pain medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.893
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1526-4637
pISSN - 1526-2375
DOI - 10.1046/j.1526-4637.2000.000024-25.x
Subject(s) - medicine , physical therapy , low back pain , referred pain , back pain , pain catastrophizing , chronic pain , alternative medicine , pathology
Authors: John Mark Disorbio, Private Practice; Daniel Bruns, Ramazzini Center This study sought to identify mean pain complaints in 10 body areas for persons in the community, and for patients with low back pain and upper extremity pain. The BHI Pain Complaints scale was administered to a total of 1487 community subjects and 777 rehabilitation patients at 90 sites in 36 US states. Subjects rated their pain globally and in 10 regions of the body. The results found that patients with back pain and upper extremity pain reported distinct clusters of symptoms, which differed significantly from each other and from the community sample. Overall, patients with back pain tended to report significantly more mid‐back, low back and lower extremity pain than did persons in either the community or upper extremity pain sample. ( P <.0001). Similarly, patients with upper extremity pain reported significantly more head ( P <.05), neck ( P <.0001), and upper extremity pain ( P <.0001) than did either the back pain or the community samples. There was no observed difference between these two groups for reported face or jaw pain, chest pain, abdominal pain, or genital pain levels. The mean low back pain score for patients with low back pain was 6.7. For patients with upper extremity pain the mean upper extremity pain report was 5.9. It was concluded that the results reflect specificity of pain intensity related to patient medical diagnoses. When asked to rate the highest and lowest global pain levels in the last month, there was no significant difference between the patient groups. Both reported a high global pain of about 7 and a low global pain of about 3. In contrast, the community sample was significantly lower than the patient sample in both high and low global pain levels ( P <.0001), averaging about 4 and 1 respectively. These levels were offered as useful clinical benchmarks. The authors wish to acknowledge the support of NCS Assessments for assistance in data collection.