Chronic Pain After Stroke: A Hospital-Based Study of Its Profile and Correlation with Health-Related Quality of Life

Abstract

Background: Chronic pain is one of the most troublesome sequelae of stroke. The correlation between post-stroke pain and patients’ quality of life has not been extensively studied. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate certain profiles of post-stroke chronic pain and evaluate its correlation with health-related quality of life. Methods: The study involved 118 participants with stroke comprising 72 (61.0%) males and 46 (39.0%) females. A convenience sampling technique was used to recruit the subjects for the study. Socio-demographic data of the participants were taken. Data on chronic pain and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) were collected using the brief pain inventory (BPI) and short form health survey (SF-36), respectively. Independent t-test was used to compare HRQoL between participants with and without chronic pain. The correlation of chronic pain with HRQoL was investigated using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. The level of significance was P ≤ 0.05. Results: Chronic pain was reported by 88 (72%) out of the 118 participants. Musculoskeletal pain was the most common type of pain. The upper limb was the most reported site of pain (63.6%). Participants with chronic pain had poorer HRQoL than those without chronic pain (P = 0.001). There were significant correlations between chronic pain and all domains of HRQoL (P < 0.05) with r values ranging from 0.181 to 0.309. Conclusions: The study showed that the majority of patients with stroke had chronic pain. The pain had a significant impact on all domains of health-related quality of life among the patients.