COMPARISON AND CORRELATION BETWEEN VISUAL ANALOGUE SCALE AND DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS OF THE SHORT FORM OF MCGILL PAIN QUESTIONNAIRE IN POST CESAREAN PAIN EVALUATION

There are several tools that used to assess postoperative pain. The McGill Pain
Questionnaire assesses the qualities of the patient’s pain in sensory and emotional dimensions in addition
to the pain intensity. Since the assessment of postoperative pain is important, this study aimed to
compare and investigate the correlation between visual analogue scale (VAS) and different dimensions
of the short form of McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) in post-cesarean pain evaluation.
Materials & Methods: This descriptive-correlational study was performed on 101 pregnant women who
referred to Mashhad Omolbanin hospital after caesarean section in 2015. Two hours after caesarean, the
pain was measured by the VAS and the SF-MPQ. The VAS was a straight horizontal line (0-10cm). The
(SF-MPQ) consisted of 12-word descriptors of pain (9 words for sensory dimensions and 3for emotional
dimension) and a verbal scale. Data were analyzed by SPSS software (version 19), Chi-square,
Spearman and Pearson correlation.
Results: The mean of VAS pain was 3.72 ± 1.50 and total scores from the SF-MPQ was (9.94 ± 4.40).
The VAS was the most correlated with the verbal expression of pain intensity from the McGill Pain
Questionnaire (r=0.64 p<0.001). The majority of subjects had mild (44.6%) or medium (52.4%) pain
intensity, with VAS; According to the verbal expression of pain, most of the subjects described their
pain as mild (40.66%) or uncomfortable (44.6%).Although, significant correlation was observed
between the VAS score and total score of SF-MPQ(r=0.55 p<0.001), but there was no significant
correlation between the VAS score and emotional dimension of SF-MPQ (r = 0.43 p = 0.07).
Conclusion: The VAS is an appropriate tool for assessing the severity of acute pain after surgery, but it
does not assess the quality and emotional dimension of pain. Since pain is a multi-dimensional problem
and in addition to physical components, it also has emotional components, using the SF-MPQ for
evaluation of postoperative pain is recommended