[Questionnaire method of evaluating the effectiveness of the treatment of pain]

A Polish version of pain questionnaire for pain intensity definition has been prepared after an inquiry study on the "pain glossary" which showed that in the Polish language a large number of words are used for characterization of pain. These words contain information about pain intensity understandable for the studied population. The authors describe this questionnaire and discuss a preliminary evaluation of its usefulness for assessing the effectiveness of pain management. The presented questionnaire makes possible evaluation of pain intensity in several indices whose values correlate significantly with each other. In comparative investigations a significant correlation has been found also between the indices of pain intensity in the questionnaire and the index in the 24-hour observation card. The mean differences of pain intensity scores calculated before and after the treatment differed significantly in definite categories of verbal evaluation of treatment effectiveness. This justifies the conclusion that the questionnaire may be useful for evaluating treatment effectiveness by a method not depending on the utterances of the patients.