Pain drawing as an investigative tool in hand surgery

Fifty consecutive patients referred to the departments of hand surgery in Malmö and Lund were asked to chart their pain on a diagram of the body before their first visit to the clinic. Three patients never answered the questionnaire and were excluded. The drawings were evaluated separately by a senior hand surgeon without access to the case records. In 19 of 47 cases (40%) the evaluation of the pain drawings agreed with the clinical diagnosis. In another 17% (8 of 47), in which the pain drawings had indicated a condition not related to hand surgery, clinical examination failed to establish a diagnosis. The evaluation of the drawings had a false negative rate of 4% (2 of 47). In the remaining 18 cases pain drawings did not give enough information for diagnosis because of the variety of symptoms. Pain drawing seems to be valuable in the evaluation of patients with chronic pain in the upper extremity.