Unveiling pain quality descriptors of chronic pain mechanisms in northern India: An observational study

Pain is a subjective feeling and most of aspects of pain assessment relies on description of one's experience.Various mechanism of pain lead to varying sensory effect among individuals that lead to variation in description of pain.Language in the form of pain description is the key for mental representation and explanation of pain.Acknowledgement of these descriptors indicating toward mechanism can enhance the efficacy of the chronic pain assessment and management.The study was aimed to evaluate descriptors for various chronic pain mechanisms mostly provided by patients to the doctors.Sample of 50 medical specialists including physiotherapist and orthopedicians dealing with chronic pain were enrolled from Rohtak district.Data regarding descriptors providing indication for various mechanism of pain was collected.Among the findings of descriptor indicating toward various mechanism nociceptive mechanism was indicated by "Throbbing", neuropathic by "Tingling", mixed by "Heavy" and centralized pain by "Aching" as the most reported descriptor.The findings of the study provide Hindi pain descriptors indicating toward various pain mechanism that can assist the therapists dealing with chronic pain and raises the need of development of Hindi pain quality measure focusing on these descriptors.