[How much pain is tolerable? Target expectations of surgical patients for pain therapy]

Sufficient pain treatment is part of surgical therapy. One popular method of pain control is patient-controlled analgesia (PCA), which allows the patients to apply small doses of analgesics intravenously via a pump. Patient involvement in PCA requires an exact assessment of the patient's expectations as to the treatment of pain.

In a prospective study the patient's expectations of pain therapy were observed with respect to their disease and the actual intensity of pain during activities measured with a visual analogue scale (VAS). Fifty-three patients were involved, using a pain questionnaire. Healthy nursing staff (n = 44) served as a control group.

Patients with benign (n = 29) or malignant (n = 24) disease showed no significant difference in the VAS scores accepted from patients as aim of successful pain therapy (25 points in the conservatively treated group and 27 points in the group of the operatively treated patients with malignant disease, 21 points in the operatively treated group with benign disease, and 18 points in the group suffering from chronic pain of benign causes). The aims for pain therapy showed no correlation with the actually felt pain intensity during movement. The control group of healthy nursing staff felt less actual pain during movement, but their expectations for sufficient pain treatment were not significantly different from the study patients (VAS 25.4 points).