Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017:2017:5983721.
doi: 10.1155/2017/5983721. Epub 2017 Feb 2.

Painful Memories: Reliability of Pain Intensity Recall at 3 Months in Senior Patients

Raoul Daoust  1 , Marie-Josée Sirois  2 , Jacques S Lee  3 , Jeffrey J Perry  4 , Lauren E Griffith  5 , Andrew Worster  5 , Eddy Lang  6 , Jean Paquet  7 , Jean-Marc Chauny  1 , Marcel Émond  2
Affiliations

Painful Memories: Reliability of Pain Intensity Recall at 3 Months in Senior Patients

Raoul Daoust et al. Pain Res Manag. 2017.

Abstract

Background. Validity of pain recall is questioned in research. Objective. To evaluate the reliability of pain intensity recall for seniors in an emergency department (ED). Methods. This study was part of a prospective multicenter project for seniors (≥65 years old) treated in an ED for minor traumatic injury. Pain intensity (0-10 numerical rating scale) was evaluated at the initial ED visit, at one week (baseline), and 3 months. At three months, patients were asked to recall the pain intensity they had at baseline. Results. 482 patients were interviewed (mean age 76.6 years, SD ± 7.3) and 72.8% were female. Intraclass correlation coefficient between pain at baseline and its recall was 0.24 (95% CI: 0.14-0.33). Senior patients tended to overestimate their pain intensity by a mean of 1.2 (95% CI: 0.9-1.5) units. A stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that the variance of baseline pain recall at 3 months was explained by pain at ED visit (11%), pain at 3 months (7%), and pain at baseline (2%). Conclusion. The accuracy of pain intensity recall after three months is poor in seniors and seems to be influenced by the pain experienced at the time of injury.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interests to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of patient's inclusion.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Stone A. A., Shiffman S., Schwartz J. E., Broderick J. E., Hufford M. R. Patient non-compliance with paper diaries. British Medical Journal. 2002;324(7347):1193–1194. doi: 10.1136/bmj.324.7347.1193. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gilron I., Jensen M. P. Clinical trial methodology of pain treatment studies: selection and measurement of self-report primary outcomes for efficacy. Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. 2011;36(4):374–381. doi: 10.1097/aap.0b013e318217a635. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Rainville P., Doucet J.-C., Fortin M.-C., Duncan G. H. Rapid deterioration of pain sensory-discriminative information in short-term memory. Pain. 2004;110(3):605–615. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2004.04.024. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Redelmeier D. A., Kahneman D. Patients' memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures. Pain. 1996;66(1):3–8. doi: 10.1016/0304-3959(96)02994-6. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Jensen M. P., Mardekian J., Lakshminarayanan M., Boye M. E. Validity of 24-h recall ratings of pain severity: biasing effects of “Peak” and “End” pain. Pain. 2008;137(2):422–427. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2007.10.006. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

Grants and funding

LinkOut - more resources