The relationship between the mcgill pain questionnaire and functional status in oncology pain patients

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The present investigation evaluated the ability of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) to predict the psychological and medical functional status of patients with pain secondary to malignancy. In contrast to findings with chronic benign pain, the results revealed that neither the affective, sensory or evaluative subscales of the MPQ Pain Rating Index (PRI) independently predicted functional status. In addition, overall pain intensity did not significantly moderate the relationship between the PRI subscale scores and functional status. The individual adjective cluster scores of the MPQ were found to be more strongly related to functional status than the PRI subscale scores. These findings provide evidence for the substantially greater discriminating power of the MPQ adjective cluster ratings as opposed to the more typically employed PRI dimensional subscale scores. The present study also outlined a method of analysis for individual adjective cluster profiles that can improve the discriminative capacity of the MPQ in patients with malignant disease.