Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy.
Center for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 31;16(3):e0248755. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248755. eCollection 2021.
Early palliative/supportive care (ePSC) is a medical intervention focused on patient's needs, that integrates standard oncological treatment, shortly after a diagnosis of advanced/metastatic cancer. ePSC improves the appropriate management of cancer pain. Understanding the semantic and emotional impact of the words used by patients to describe their pain may further improve its assessment in the ePSC setting. Psycholinguistics assumes that the semantic and affective properties of words affect the ease by which they are processed and comprehended. Therefore, in this cross-sectional survey study we collected normative data about the semantic and affective properties of words associated to physical and social pain, in order to investigate how patients with cancer pain on ePSC process them compared to healthy, pain-free individuals. One hundred ninety patients and 124 matched controls rated the Familiarity, Valence, Arousal, Pain-relatedness, Intensity, and Unpleasantness of 94 words expressing physical and social pain. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed on ratings in order to unveil patients' semantic and affective representation of pain and compare it with those from controls. Possible effects of variables associated to the illness experience were also tested. Both groups perceived the words conveying social pain as more negative and pain-related than those expressing physical pain, confirming previous evidence of social pain described as worse than physical pain. Patients rated pain words as less negative, less pain-related, and conveying a lower intense and unpleasant pain than controls, suggesting either an adaptation to the pain experience or the role played by ePSC in improving patients' ability to cope with it. This exploratory study suggests that a chronic pain experience as the one experienced by cancer patients on ePSC affects the semantic and affective representation of pain words.
早期姑息/支持治疗（ePSC）是一种关注患者需求的医疗干预措施，在诊断出晚期/转移性癌症后不久，将其与标准肿瘤治疗相结合。ePSC 可改善癌症疼痛的适当管理。了解患者用来描述疼痛的词语的语义和情感影响，可能会进一步改善 ePSC 环境中的评估。心理语言学假设，词语的语义和情感属性会影响其处理和理解的难易程度。因此，在这项横断面调查研究中，我们收集了与身体和社交疼痛相关的词语的语义和情感属性的规范数据，以研究接受 ePSC 的癌症疼痛患者与健康、无痛个体相比如何处理这些词语。190 名患者和 124 名匹配的对照者对 94 个表达身体和社交疼痛的词语的熟悉度、效价、唤醒度、与疼痛的相关性、强度和不愉快度进行了评分。为了揭示患者对疼痛的语义和情感表达，并将其与对照组进行比较，我们对评分进行了描述性和推断性统计分析。还测试了与疾病体验相关的变量的可能影响。两组人群都认为表达社交疼痛的词语比表达身体疼痛的词语更负面和与疼痛相关，这证实了先前描述的社交疼痛比身体疼痛更糟糕的证据。与对照组相比，患者对疼痛词语的评价更为消极、与疼痛相关性更低、强度和不愉快度更低，这表明患者要么适应了疼痛体验，要么 ePSC 在改善患者应对疼痛的能力方面发挥了作用。这项探索性研究表明，接受 ePSC 的癌症患者所经历的慢性疼痛体验会影响疼痛词语的语义和情感表达。
