Abstract
BackgroundThe way pain is remembered and reported can affect medical decisions taken by patients and health-care professionals. Memory of pain has been investigated extensively for the past few decades; however, the results of previous studies are highly variable, indicating that the recollection of pain can be accurate, overestimated or underestimated. It is therefore difficult to conclude how well pain is remembered. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to summarize research findings on memory of pain in healthy adults and patients suffering from acute and chronic pain.MethodsThe systematic review will be performed by searching for articles indexed in the following databases: PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, PsycARTICLES, Scopus and Academic Search Complete. Studies will be included if (1) they investigated healthy adults or patients with any acute or chronic pain condition and if (2) they assessed experienced pain (pain intensity and/or pain unpleasantness) and its recollection. No restrictions related to the date of publication and recall delay will be applied. Studies will be screened for eligibility and risk of bias by two independent assessors. The risk of bias will be assessed by a modified Downs and Black checklist. A narrative synthesis will be performed in the first stage; in the second stage, the results of studies with comparable designs will be pooled in meta-analytical syntheses.DiscussionThe question of whether pain is remembered accurately is crucial for valid pain diagnosis, effective treatment and prognosis. So far, a number of studies on memory of pain have been conducted; however, a definitive conclusion on whether memory of pain is accurate is still lacking. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, available data will be pooled together to further inform research and clinical practice.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42018093523
Highlights
The way pain is remembered and reported can affect medical decisions taken by patients and health-care professionals
Reports of pain experienced in the past are taken into account by medical professionals when diagnosing patients and deciding on appropriate treatments [1, 2]; they form the basis of the assessment of such treatment
Memory of past pain influences decisions concerning whether to engage in future painful experiences, e.g. undergoing painful medical examinations [3, 4] and how painful those experiences will be [18]; it can influence the development of chronic pain [43, 44]
Summary
This review protocol was designed a priori according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses Protocols (PRISMA-P checklist form) guideline [34]. The following data will be extracted from studies: sample size, age, gender, general type of pain (acute, chronic, experimentally induced), source of pain (e.g. labor, surgery), nature of noxious stimuli (e.g. thermal, capsaicininduced), characteristics of pain stimulation (e.g. mA, °C), duration of pain, dimension of pain (e.g. sensory, affective), type of pain assessment tools (e.g., NRS, VAS, VRS) and scale anchors, methods of collecting the pain assessments (e.g. paper and pencil, telephone, online survey), recall delay between the experience of pain and its recollection, number of assessments of the pain experience and memory of pain, type of pain assessment (e.g. average, maximum, minimum, end) and data from the assessment of the pain experience and its recall (e.g., means and standard deviations). Risk of bias assessment checklist based on Black and Downs Scale [39]*. (DOCX 19 kb)
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