Pain Quality by Location in Outpatients with Cancer

Background: The McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) pain quality descriptors have been analyzed to characterize the sensory, affective, and evaluative domains of pain, but have not been differentiated by pain location.

Aim: To examine MPQ pain quality descriptors by pain location in outpatients with lung or prostate cancer.

Design: Cross sectional.

Settings: Eleven oncology clinics or patients' homes.

Subjects: 264 adult outpatients (80% male; mean age 62.2 ± 10.0 years, 85% White).

Methods: Subjects completed a 100 mm visual analogue scale of pain intensity and MPQ clinic or home visit, marking sites where they had pain on a body outline and circling from 78 verbal descriptors those that described their pain. A researcher noted next to the descriptor spontaneous comments about sites feeling like a selected word and queried the subjects about any other words to obtain the site(s).

Results: Pain quality descriptors were assigned to all 7 pain locations marked by ≥ 20% of 198 lung or 66 prostate cancer patients. Four pain locations were marked with pain quality descriptors significanlty (p < .05) more frequently for lung cancer (53% chest-aching, burning; 58% back-aching, stabbing; 48% head-aching, sharp; and 19% arms-aching, stabbing) than for prostate cancer, which had significantly more frequent pain locations in the abdomen (64%-aching, burning) and lower back/buttocks (55%-aching, burning).

Conclusions: This type of pain characterization is innovative and has the potential to help implement targeted treatments for patients with cancer and other chronic pain conditions.