Determining Pain Catastrophizing from Daily Pain App Assessment Data: Role of Computer-Based Classification.

Determining Pain Catastrophizing from Daily Pain App Assessment Data: Role of Computer-Based Classification.

J Pain. 2018 Sep 28;:

Authors: Jamison RN, Xu X, Wan L, Edwards RR, Ross EL

Abstract
This study compared persons with chronic pain who consistently reported that their pain was worsening with those who reported that their pain was improving or remaining the same per daily assessment data from a smartphone pain app. All subjects completed baseline measures and were asked to record their progress every day by answering whether their overall condition had improved, remained the same, or gotten worse (Perceived Change) on a VAS scale. One hundred forty-four individuals with chronic pain who successfully entered daily assessments were included. Those persons who were classified as "Worse" showed significantly higher pain intensity scores, greater activity interference, higher disability and mood disturbance scores, and higher scores on the Pain Catastrophizing Scale both at baseline and after 3 months (p<0.001). Repeated measures analyses and multilevel modeling of Perceived Change data over different time intervals of 20 assessments over 40 days, 10 assessments over 20 days and 5 assessments over 10 days were examined. These analyses demonstrated that group classification of Better, Same and Worse could be reliably determined, even with as few as five assessments. These results support the use of innovative mHealth technology to identify individuals who are prone to catastrophize about their pain.
PERSPECTIVE: This study demonstrated that daily assessment of overall perceived change with a smartphone pain app was positively correlated with the Pain Catastrophizing Scale and capturing short-term daily assessment trends data using computer-based classification methods might be a future way to help to identify individuals who tend to catastrophize about their pain.

PMID: 30273687 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]