Greek brief pain inventory: validation and utility in cancer pain

The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) is a pain assessment tool. It has been translated into and validated in several languages. The purpose of this study was the translation into and validation of the BPI in Greek. Moreover, we wanted to detect cultural and social differences, if any, of pain interference in patients' lives.

The translation and validation of the inventory took place at the Areteion Hospital. The final validation sample consisted of 220 cancer patients (123 males, 97 females, age range 21-87 years, mean age 61.3). Primary cancer locations were lung 25.6%, gastrointestinal tract 25.6%, breast 11.5%, prostate 7.07%, gynecological cancers 9.6% and others 20.57%. The patients themselves completed the majority of the Greek BPI (G-BPI) papers. The pain management index (PMI) was also calculated in order to assess the adequacy of pain treatment. Assessing the reliability and the validity made the actual validation of the G-BPI.

Pain severity and pain management: 147 patients reported severe pain, 48 patients moderate, and 25 patients mild pain (mean average pain 6.22). From these patients only 21 were found on strong and 33 on weak opioid treatment, while 166 patients were found on no opioid analgesic treatment. In agreement with these data is the PMI which was positive only for 9 patients, while 44 patients had PMI = 0 and all the others had negative PMI scores. Reliability and Validity of the G-BPI: Coefficient alphas were 0.849 for the interference items and 0.887 for the severity items. Additionally, the factor analysis of the G-BPI items results in a two-factor solution, that satisfies the criteria of reproducibility, interpretability and confirmatory setting.

This study shows the efficacy of the G-BPI for the assessment of pain severity as well as the pain management in Greece, and therefore its utility in improving the analgesic treatment outcome in Greek patients.