Pain Quality Among Hospitalized Postcraniotomy Brain Tumor Patients.
Rebecca E Foust Winton, Claire B Draucker, Diane Von Ah
PMID 33793175WHAT IT FOUND
Hospitalized post-craniotomy patients described pain as pressure, soreness, stabbing, throbbing, jarring, or itching.
Asking what the pain feels like may reveal bothersome qualities, such as itching, that intensity scores alone can miss.
Key findings
01Participants described their pain using six quality descriptors: pressure, tender or sore, sharp or stabbing, throbbing, jarring, and itching.
02Pain quality often changed over the post-surgical period, and some participants used more than one descriptor.
03Four participants described itching as painful, particularly bothersome, and often unremitting.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat 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
Twenty-eight patients consented, but one was not interviewed and one medical record was unavailable, so interview findings are based on 27 patients and demographic and medical data on 26. Interviews were conducted at a single time point, so some participants had difficulty describing how pain quality changed over time. Participants had had anesthesia and most were taking pain medications, so their memories of pain quality may have been incomplete. The study was done on one hospital unit with standard post-surgical pain orders, so the range of pain qualities may not reflect other settings. Minorities were under-represented, although different groups may respond to pain differently. The primary investigator had concerns about pain management in this population, which may have influenced focus on problematic pain descriptions.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that these six descriptors prove a specific pain quality predicts outcomes or that asking about pain quality improves management. The study was descriptive, used one-time interviews at a single unit, and did not test treatments or outcomes.