Pain Quality by Location in Outpatients with Cancer

The McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) pain quality descriptors have been analyzed to characterize the sensory, affective, and evaluative domains of pain, but have not been differentiated by pain location.

To examine MPQ pain quality descriptors by pain location in outpatients with lung or prostate cancer.

Cross sectional.

Eleven oncology clinics or patients' homes.

264 adult outpatients (80% male; mean age 62.2 ± 10.0 years, 85% White).

Subjects completed a 100 mm visual analogue scale of pain intensity and MPQ clinic or home visit, marking sites where they had pain on a body outline and circling from 78 verbal descriptors those that described their pain. A researcher noted next to the descriptor spontaneous comments about sites feeling like a selected word and queried the subjects about any other words to obtain the site(s).

Pain quality descriptors were assigned to all 7 pain locations marked by ≥ 20% of 198 lung or 66 prostate cancer patients. Four pain locations were marked with pain quality descriptors significanlty (p < .05) more frequently for lung cancer (53% chest-aching, burning; 58% back-aching, stabbing; 48% head-aching, sharp; and 19% arms-aching, stabbing) than for prostate cancer, which had significantly more frequent pain locations in the abdomen (64%-aching, burning) and lower back/buttocks (55%-aching, burning).

This type of pain characterization is innovative and has the potential to help implement targeted treatments for patients with cancer and other chronic pain conditions.