Breast Cancer EDGE Task Force Outcomes: Clinical Measures of Pain

Pain is one of the most commonly reported impairments after breast cancer treatment affecting anywhere from 16-73% of breast cancer survivors Despite the high reported incidence of pain from cancer and its treatments, the ability to evaluate cancer pain continues to be difficult due to the complexity of the disease and the subjective experience of pain. The Oncology Section Breast Cancer EDGE Task Force was created to evaluate the evidence behind clinical outcome measures of pain in women diagnosed with breast cancer.

The authors systematically reviewed the literature for pain outcome measures published in the research involving women diagnosed with breast cancer. The goal was to examine the reported psychometric properties that are reported in the literature in order to determine clinical utility.

Visual Analog Scale, Numeric Rating Scale, Pressure Pain Threshold, McGill Pain Questionnaire, McGill Pain Questionnaire - Short Form, Brief Pain Inventory and Brief Pain Inventory - Short Form were highly recommended by the Task Force. The Task Force was unable to recommend two measures for use in the breast cancer population at the present time.

A variety of outcome measures were used to measure pain in women diagnosed with breast cancer. When assessing pain in women with breast cancer, researchers and clinicians need to determine whether a unidimensional or multidimensional tool is most appropriate as well as whether the tool has strong psychometric properties.