Pain Assessment in Indian Parkinson's Disease Patients Using King's Parkinson's Disease Pain Scale

Pain is a common symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Scales to rate pain in PD are marred by several flaws, either not being available in other languages or not specific for PD.

To assess the frequency of pain among bilingual Indian PD patients using "King's Parkinson's disease pain scale" (KPPS) and to validate it.

We randomly administered KPPS in Hindi/English to all consecutive bilingual persons with PD. The results were appropriately analyzed.

A total of 119 PD patients were enrolled with a mean age of 64.34 (± 9.57) years. Median Hoehn and Yahr stage was 2 (42.85%). Pain was present in 62 (52.1%) PD patients. The most common type was musculoskeletal (74.19%). The mean total KPPS score was 16.02 ± 10.57. KPPS score was significantly higher in women and correlated positively with unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS) part 2 and 4 scores (r = 0.27 and r = 0.25). Risk factors for pain were female gender, higher H and Y stage, total UPDRS score, and individual UPDRS part 3 and 4 scores. Difficulty falling asleep (P = 0.01), frequent awakenings (P = 0.01), diminished smell sensation (P = 0.003), diminished speech volume (P = 0.02), gait freezing (P = 0.03), and falls (P = 0.001) correlated with the presence of pain. The interclass correlation coefficient between the Hindi and English versions of KPPS was 0.835, while Bland-Altman analysis showed 96.7% agreement suggesting excellent correlation and validation.

KPPS is an easy tool for characterization, scoring, and follow-up of pain in PD patients. The Hindi version has good agreement with the original English version.