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Pain in individuals with multiple sclerosis, knee prosthesis, and post-herpetic neuralgia: learning from focus group patients' experience
The Clinical Journal of Pain, 04/09/2012
Saverino A et al. – Original spontaneous descriptors, possibly pathology–specific, emerged in all groups not included in the MGPQ and pointed out the need to use assessment tools based on people experience.
Methods- Authors used focus group (FG) of discussion to collect participants’ opinion about their pain.
- They organized 2 FGs for persons with MS.
- They also gathered 2 FGs of individuals who had a recent knee arthroplasty, suffering a pure nociceptive pain, and 2 FGs of individuals with post–herpetic neuralgia, suffering a pure neuropathic pain, to compare their experience with the one of the people with MS.
- Original spontaneous descriptors emerged in all the groups.
- People with MS in particular used various symbolic descriptors to express their pain’s quality and underlined the high impact of pain on their lives.
- The use of specific descriptors for neuropathic and nociceptive pain in the different groups did not appear easily definable.
- Finally, pain descriptors used during FG appeared to be different than the ones included in the MGPQ.
