The Evaluation of Pain in Neurosurgical Patients before and after Operation in Kerman Shahid Bahonar Hospital according to the McGill Pain Questionnaire

Abstract

The McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) consists primarily of 3 major classes of word descriptors -sensory, affective and evaluative that are used by patients to specify subjective pain experience. It also contains an intensity scale and other items to determine the properties of pain experience. The questionnaire was designed to provide quantitative measures of clinical pain that can be treated statistically. This paper describes the procedures for administration of the questionnaire and the various measures that can be derived fromِ an Iranian version in comperison with previous results which were obtained from other countries. The mean and standard deviation of these measures, based on data obtained from 46 neurosurgical patients suffering from several kinds of psychocognitive and emotional status, before and after surgery in Kerman Shahid Bahonar Hospital is presented. In addition, an experimental study utilizing the questionnaire was analyzed in order to describe the nature of the information obtained by an Iranian version. The data, taken together, indicate that the McGill Pain Questionnaire provides quantitative information that can be treated statistically, and is sufficiently sensitive to detect differences among different methods of pain relieve which work with Iranian pain patients. These results show that the dimensions are close to the previous studies conducted by Melzak and Torgerson (1971) and Ebrahimi-Nejad (1997).