Abstract
Purpose Pain is one of the nonmotor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD) that, in order to be better managed, requires to be evaluated. Evaluations are done using pain assessment scales such as the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire-2 (SF-MPQ-2). The goal of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of SF-MPQ-2 to measure pain in people with PD. Methods Four hundred and twenty-eight PD patients with a mean (SD) age of 60.11 (11.44) years were included. Accessibility was measured through floor and ceiling effects. Dimensionality was estimated by exploratory factor analysis. The association between SF-MPQ-2 and other scales such as Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory, Douleur Neuropathic 4, Brief Pain Inventory, King's Pain Parkinson's Disease Scale, and Visual Analog Scale-Pain was considered to calculate convergent validity. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were assessed by Cronbach's alpha and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), respectively. Results A noticeable floor effect was found. Dimensionality results indicated four factors for this scale. A strong relationship was found between the SF-MPQ-2 total score and other scales (r = 0.55 to 0.85). In reliability analysis, Cronbach's alpha and ICC were 0.93 and 0.94 for SF-MPQ-2, respectively. Conclusion The results of this study showed that SF-MPQ-2 has adequate validity and reliability to measure pain in people with Parkinson's disease.
Highlights
Symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) fall into two categories: motor and nonmotor, among which pain is commonly reported
Neuropathic pain includes cases caused by direct injury or disease that affect the somatosensory system [5]. e pathophysiology of this type of pain in the PD has not yet been precisely determined, but some studies have shown that it may be due to the unusual function of nociceptive processing in the central nervous system [6]. e clinical features of this type of pain are burning sensation with sudden flare-ups and a decrease in the sensory threshold of pain, which is associated with more involvement in the body side with predominant motor symptoms [7]
Findings from dimensionality analysis of the SF-MPQ-2 in our PD population were in line with other disease entities demonstrating a four-factor scale, which can be used to measure pain in various dimensions, including continuous, intermittent, neuropathic, and affective [13, 16,17,18,19,20,21]
Summary
Symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) fall into two categories: motor (tremor, rigidity, etc.) and nonmotor (fatigue, dementia, pain, etc.), among which pain is commonly reported. About 30–80% of people with PD describe different types of pain, such as musculoskeletal and neuropathic pain [3, 4]. E clinical features of this type of pain are burning sensation with sudden flare-ups and a decrease in the sensory threshold of pain, which is associated with more involvement in the body side with predominant motor symptoms [7]. Musculoskeletal pain in these patients is mostly caused by abnormal posture/rigidity and akinesia due to motor fluctuations [7,8]. Patients with PD who had such pain do not receive adequate analgesic treatments, but some studies have shown that levodopa administration, deep brain stimulation, pain management approaches, and rehabilitation exercises can be partially effective in treating these pains [7,8,9,10]
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