Assessing pain intensity: critical questions for researchers and clinicians

Abstract

Reliable and valid measures of pain intensity are essential to be able to evaluate the efficacy of pain treatments and provide the best care.The most used pain intensity measures are the visual analogue scale (VAS), 0-10 numerical rating scale (NRS-11), 4-or 5-point verbal rating scale (VRS-4 and VRS-5, respectively) and faces pain scalerevised (FPS-R) [1].However, it is not always clear which of these are most appropriate for use in any one setting.Two articles published in this issue of Anaesthesia [2, 3] provide new findings related to the strengths and weaknesses of pain intensity scales.The primary goal of the study by Goudman et al. was to determine if the NRS-11 and VAS rating are directly comparable in a sample of adults with chronic pain [2].Moore et al. sought to determine if the VRS-4

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