The Use of Pain Drawings in Screening for Psychological Involvement in Complaints of Lowhyphen;Back Pain

摘要

NA;The pain drawings of 54 lowhyphen;backhyphen;pain patients were examined to find out if it is possible to use them as a brief screening test in order to assess the psychological impairment of the patients. We were using the scoring system of Ransford et al, which we slightly changed, and chose as a criterion variable the ERMSS lpar;Erweiterte Revidierte Mehrdimensionale Schmerzskalarpar; of Cziske. This test originates in the McGill Pain Questionnaire of Melzack and Torgersonsemi; its scales describe four dimensions of pain perceptioncolon; pain intensity, the sensorydiscriminative dimension reflecting the somatic aspect of painsemi; the affectivehyphen;motivational dimension, and the total number of words, both representing the psychological involvement of a pain patient. A correlation was found between pain drawing score and the sensoryhyphen;discriminative dimension of pain perception, whereas there was no such correlation between drawing score and the affective dimension. These results indicate that the pain drawing score might not be a sufficiently valid instrument for assessing psychological disturbances in pain patients to allow it to be used for individual diagnosis without hesitation.