D C Turk — Page 7 | Search PubMed

PubMedDate not supplied

Conceptual issues in the assessment of clinical pain.

A number of approaches to the clinical assessment of pain are examined. Emphasis is placed on the importance of matching assessment procedures with specific research or referral questions being addressed. The importance of a comprehensive approach in which cognitive, affective, and behavioral, as well as sensory-physiological dimensions are assessed is discussed drawing on three case examples. Methodological and conceptual issues of pain assessment are examined and guidelines for comprehensive pain assessment are offered.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Strategies for classifying chronic orofacial pain patients.

To communicate, understand, and prescribe treatment, it is essential that some consensually validated criteria be used to describe groups of patients who share a set of relevant attributes. Several classification systems have been developed to described relatively homogeneous subgroups of chronic pain patients. These systems have been based on theoretical perspectives of chronic pain syndromes tied to physical pathology. Alternative systems based on a priori psychological categories or empirically derived classifications also have been proposed. Some of the strengths and weaknesses of deductive and inductive approaches to classification are described, and the advantages of polydiagnostic and multiaxial approaches are described as alternatives to the traditional classification. Research on an empirically derived multiaxial classification for chronic pain is described and related to chronic orofacial pain.

Chronic Disease↗