Can psychometric tools be used to analyse pain in a geriatric population?

Pain is both a sensory and an emotional experience. In a multidisciplinary pain management clinic for a geriatric population, pain and mood have been assessed prior to the initiation of management in 49 of 100 referred patients. Patients have been assessed clinically, for psychological disability using the profile of mood states (POMS) and a visual analogue scale for mood, for pain using the McGill pain questionnaire (short form), word descriptor scale and visual analogue scale and for activities of daily living (ADL) using the Disability and Impairment Interview Schedule and the Rapid Disability Rating Scale -2. All testing has followed initial screening to exclude dementia. For the group assessed by psychometric measures, median age was 75 years (range 56 to 91); 41 were female. Major pathologies were degenerative musculoskeletal disease (15), post-herpetic neuralgia (9), and psychiatric conditions (7). Intra-test item correlations were found to be significant for the McGill questionnaire and the POMS. Inter-test correlations were observed for pain measures (McGill present pain intensity with VAS pain, r = 0.67; with word descriptor, 0.64; p less than 0.001), for ADL measures (r = 0.53, p less than 0.001) and for measures of mood (VAS mood with POMS (depression), r = 0.45; p less than 0.001; with POMS (anxiety), r = 0.35; p less than 0.01. There was no significant correlation between measures of mood and pain on the McGill scale. The data to this time support the view that standard psychometric tools can be used reliably to evaluate pain, mood and activity in this population. Furthermore, it appears that mood and pain may be measured separately.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)