King's Parkinson's Disease Pain Questionnaire: reliability and convergent construct validity.
Ana Carolina Sartori, Fânia Cristina Dos Santos, Juliana de Lima Lopes and 2 others
PMID 37556691WHAT IT FOUND
The King's Parkinson's Disease Pain Questionnaire is reliable for assessing pain in Brazilian older adults with Parkinson's.
A change of 9 points on its 168-point scale marks a clinically important difference. It correlates weakly with general pain measures, suggesting it captures Parkinson-specific pain.
Key findings
01The questionnaire showed satisfactory internal consistency and excellent stability between repeated applications.
02A change of 9 points on the total score is the threshold for identifying clinically relevant improvement or worsening.
03Convergent validity with the Geriatric Pain Measure was weak, likely because the questionnaire targets Parkinson-specific pain types.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPsWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample from two clinics in São Paulo, which may limit generalizability to other regions or populations. The study excluded patients with severe dementia or communication impairment, so the tool's usability in more cognitively impaired patients is unknown. The weak correlation with the Geriatric Pain Measure suggests the KPPS measures a distinct construct, but this also means it does not align closely with general pain assessments. Most participants had low education levels, which may have influenced how they interpreted the questionnaire items despite the interview format.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The KPPS was originally developed with funding from various institutes and foundations linked to health and Parkinson's organizations, but the current study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Universidade Federal de São Paulo.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the KPPS scores correlate strongly with general pain measures. The weak correlation with the Geriatric Pain Measure indicates the KPPS captures Parkinson-specific pain dimensions, so using it alongside general pain scales is necessary for a complete picture.