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Published on: July 4, 2018
Occurrence and characterization of Pain in immune-mediated neuropathies: a multicentre prospective study
C Pazzaglia1, C Briani, E Nobile-Orazio
1Department of Neurosciences, Institute of Neurology, Catholic University, Rome, Italy. costanza.pazzaglia@rm.unicatt.it
Background:
pain is a common symptom of peripheral neuropathies that may severely affect patients' Quality of Life. Pain questionnaires, based on verbal descriptors, are a useful way to investigate it.
Methods:
we performed a multicentre study through validated measures to characterize pain in a sample of consecutive patients affected by immune-mediated neuropathies.
Results:
ninety-three patients were enrolled in 16 Italian centres. Based on the numeric rating scale, almost half of the patients complained of moderate pain and one-third of the patients severe pain. Overall, up to 50% of our patients with immune-mediated neuropathies complained of neuropathic pain. The most common neuropathic symptoms were paraesthesia/dysesthesia and superficial spontaneous pain. Surprisingly, also patients with neuropathies commonly thought to be painless (such as multifocal motor neuropathy) reported discomfort and painful symptoms.
Conclusions:
pain questionnaires should be considered in the clinical evaluation of immune-mediated neuropathies, also when evaluating therapy efficacy, because they may provide clinicians with useful information on painful symptoms and patients' quality of life.
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