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The association between pain drawings and computed tomographic/discographic pain responses
D D Ohnmeiss1, H Vanharanta, R D Guyer
1Texas Back Institute Research Foundation, Plano, USA.
Study Design:
Pain drawings were scored and their relationship to discographic pain responses was investigated.
Objectives:
The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between patients indicating pain in nonanatomic patterns on pain drawings (possibly suggestive of a tendency to overreport pain) and discographic pain responses, and in particular, if patients with abnormal drawings were more likely to provide false-positive discographic pain reports.
Summary Of Background Data:
Patients with abnormal pain drawings have been found to have elevated scores on the hysteria and hypochondriasis scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Elevations on these same two scales have been related to discordant discographic pain reports.
Methods:
Pain drawings were completed by 170 patients the day of, but before computed tomography/discography. The drawings were scored as described by Ransford et al and classified as normal or abnormal. The number of levels at which a patient reported pain and the incidence of false-positive computed tomographic/discographic pain reports were compared for the two pain drawing groups.
Results:
Patients with abnormal drawings reported pain at more levels than patients with normal ones. When dealing specifically with false-positive pain reports (pain reproduction on the injection of a nondisrupted disc), among the 105 patients in the normal group, only 13 (12.3%) reported false-positive pain. This was significantly less than the 50.0% (18 of 36) reporting false-positive pain in the abnormal group. The overall accuracy of pain drawings in differentiating patients with false-positive pain reports was 78.0% (110 of 141).
Conclusions:
There is a relationship between pain drawings and discographic pain responses. Pain drawings can help identify patients who may be likely to report pain on injection of a nondisrupted disc. While it was not totally sensitive to this occurrence, it can help identify at least some of the patients in whom pain responses should be interpreted cautiously.