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Abstract

To evaluate the prevalence of self-reported sleep disturbance and its relationship to mood disturbance in chronic pain patients. Survey of patients referred to a multidisciplinary outpatient pain clinic. The sample consisted of 105 consecutive patients (59 men and 46 women), with an average age of 41.5 (SD +/-13.4) years. Self-report measures of sleep disturbance and visual analog scales of mood disturbance (anxiety and depression) and pain experience (intensity and unpleasantness). Patients were grouped according to whether they considered themselves "poor" (n = 68) or "good" (n = 37) sleepers. Poor sleepers reported more difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep and greater pain intensity and pain unpleasantness than did good sleepers. The two groups did not differ on measures of depressive or anxious mood. The results suggest that sleep disturbance is a prevalent complaint in chronic pain patients, but it is not always associated with an underlying mood disturbance.

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Most cited references 16

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The validation of visual analogue scales as ratio scale measures for chronic and experimental pain.

D. Price, A Rafii, Colman McGrath … (1983)

Visual analogue scales (VAS) of sensory intensity and affective magnitude were validated as ratio scale measures for both chronic and experimental pain. Chronic pain patients and healthy volunteers made VAS sensory and affective responses to 6 noxious thermal stimuli (43, 45, 47, 48, 49 and 51 degrees C) applied for 5 sec to the forearm by a contact thermode. Sensory VAS and affective VAS responses to these temperatures yielded power functions with exponents 2.1 and 3.8, respectively; these functions were similar for pain patients and for volunteers. The power functions were predictive of estimated ratios of sensation or affect produced by pairs of standard temperatures (e.g. 47 and 49 degrees C), thereby providing direct evidence for ratio scaling properties of VAS. Vas sensory intensity responses to experimental pain, VAS sensory intensity responses to different levels of chronic pain, and direct temperature (experimental pain) matches to 3 levels of chronic pain were all internally consistent, thereby demonstrating the valid use of VAS for the measurement of and comparison between chronic pain and experimental heat pain.