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Prevalence of Chronic Pain Among Libyan Adults in Derna City: A Pilot Study to Assess the Reliability, Linguistic Validity, and Feasibility of Using an Arabic Version of the Structured Telephone Interviews Questionnaire on Chronic Pain
Author(s) -
Elzahaf Raga A.,
Tashani Osama A.,
Johnson Mark I.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
pain practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.899
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1533-2500
pISSN - 1530-7085
DOI - 10.1111/j.1533-2500.2012.00594.x
Subject(s) - arabic , medicine , reliability (semiconductor) , chronic pain , validity , physical therapy , family medicine , clinical psychology , psychometrics , linguistics , philosophy , physics , power (physics) , quantum mechanics
There are few studies estimating the prevalence of chronic pain in countries from the M iddle E ast. We translated the S tructured T elephone I nterviews Q uestionnaire on C hronic P ain from E nglish into A rabic and assessed its reliability and linguistic validity before using it in a telephone survey in L ibya to gather preliminary prevalence data for chronic pain. Intraclass correlations for scaled items were high, and there were no differences in answers to nominal items between the first and second completions of the questionnaire. One hundred and 4 individuals participated in a telephone survey. The prevalence of chronic pain was 25.0% (95% CI , 16.7% to 33.3%) and 50.0% (95% CI : 30.8% to 69.2) of the participants with chronic pain scored ≥ 12 on the A rabic S ‐ LANSS . Mean ± SD duration of pain was 2.8 ± 1.2 years, and pain was more frequent in women ( P = 0.02). 53.8% of participants had taken prescription medication for their pain, and 76.9% had used nondrug methods of treatment including traditional L ibyan methods such as K amara, a local herbal concoction. Eighty percent believed that their doctor would rather treat their illness than their pain, and 35% reported that their doctor did not think that their pain was a problem. Some participants complained that the questionnaire was too long with a mean ± SD call duration of 20 ± 5.4 minutes. We conclude that the A rabic S tructured T elephone I nterviews Q uestionnaire on C hronic P ain was reliable and linguistically valid and could be used in a large‐scale telephone survey on the L ibyan population. Our preliminary estimate of prevalence should be considered with caution because of the small sample size.