Siwach Priyanka, Jensen Mark P, Verma Bhawna
College of Physiotherapy, Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak, India.
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
J Pain Res. 2024 Oct 4;17:3255-3265. doi: 10.2147/JPR.S457925. eCollection 2024.
Chronic pain is a common health problem worldwide that results in significant costs to society and has negative impacts on the individuals with chronic pain. In order to study and treat pain, valid and reliable pain assessment is necessary, including assessment of pain quality. However, all of the most commonly used measures of pain quality were developed in Western countries. Evidence has shown that some of these measures are not content valid for use in non-Western countries. Moreover, it remains unclear which pain descriptors are universal across people from different countries who speak different languages, and which are specific to individuals from a particular country or even from a particular region within one country.
The current study sought to: (1) identify the number and frequency of words used by native speakers of Hindi in northern India to describe their pain; (2) compare the rates of descriptor use in these individuals with samples of individuals from Nepal and the USA; and (3) investigate the content validity of the most commonly used pain quality measures for measuring pain in this Hindi-speaking population.
Two hundred and forty individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain who speak and understand Hindi were asked to describe their pain.
The results showed overlap as well as differences in the words used to describe pain with samples of individuals with pain from other countries. Moreover, of the pain quality measures examined were found to be content valid in the Hindi-speaking sample, suggesting that these measures need to be adapted to assess pain quality in this population.
The study findings confirm the conclusion that pain quality measures developed in one country or in one pain population are not necessarily valid for assessing pain quality in a population from another country. The findings also suggest the possibility that a measure could be developed which would allow for more valid assessment of pain quality in individuals with pain from different countries.
慢性疼痛是全球常见的健康问题，给社会带来巨大成本，并对慢性疼痛患者产生负面影响。为了研究和治疗疼痛，进行有效且可靠的疼痛评估是必要的，包括对疼痛性质的评估。然而，所有最常用的疼痛性质测量方法都是在西方国家开发的。有证据表明，其中一些测量方法在非西方国家使用时内容效度不足。此外，对于来自不同国家、说不同语言的人，哪些疼痛描述词是通用的，哪些是特定于某个国家甚至一个国家内某个特定地区的人，仍不清楚。
本研究旨在：（1）确定印度北部印地语母语者用于描述疼痛的词汇数量和频率；（2）将这些人的描述词使用率与来自尼泊尔和美国的样本进行比较；（3）调查最常用的疼痛性质测量方法在这个说印地语的人群中测量疼痛的内容效度。
240名患有慢性肌肉骨骼疼痛且会说并理解印地语的人被要求描述他们的疼痛。
结果显示，与其他国家疼痛患者样本相比，用于描述疼痛的词汇既有重叠也有差异。此外，在所检查的疼痛性质测量方法中，发现部分方法在说印地语的样本中内容效度不足，这表明这些方法需要进行调整以评估该人群的疼痛性质。
研究结果证实了这一结论，即在一个国家或一类疼痛人群中开发的疼痛性质测量方法不一定适用于评估另一个国家人群的疼痛性质。研究结果还表明，有可能开发出一种测量方法，以便更有效地评估来自不同国家的疼痛患者的疼痛性质。
