Measures used to assess chronic pelvic pain in randomized controlled clinical trials: a systematic review

Abstract

Rationale: Many types of pain assessment are available to researchers carrying out clinical trials in chronic pelvic pain (CPP), ranging from a single-item scale to multidimensional inventories.

Aim: Our objective was to investigate which assessments of pain are more commonly used in clinical trials on CPP.

Method: We have reviewed articles published between 1991 and 2014. A total of 74 studies out of 1299 original research articles reviewed met the selection criteria by containing at least one method of pain assessment. The selected studies were classified according to the dimensions of pain evaluated, the type of scale and the descriptors used.

Results: The instruments most frequently used were single-item VAS and Biberoglu and Behrman pain score, while multidimensional inventories were used in few studies. The results of clinical studies in CPP are more frequently based on one-dimensional measurements. Valuable results from clinical studies in CPP might have been omitted because of incomplete outcome measurements.

Conclusion: We believe the authors of clinical studies should report their results in a comprehensive way including in the outcomes of the measurement of one-dimensional and multidimensional pain characteristics.

Keywords: chronic pelvic pain; evaluation; evidence-based medicine; systematic reviews.