Pain Questionnaire – learn to better describe your nerve pain symptoms
"My pain feels like ..." take the pain questionnaire to describe your pain.
Pain can take many forms and affects people in different ways. One kind of long-lasting or chronic pain results from nerve damage. This pain is called neuropathic pain or nerve pain and is often described as a burning, shooting, lancinating, electric shock like sensation.1
Over 26 million people worldwide suffer from neuropathic pain1 but only 40-60% of patients achieve adequate pain relief.2 Patients often undergo ‘trial and error’ treatments or endure a stepwise treatment approach over months and years.2 These patients suffer emotionally, physically, psychologically and socially.
Approximately 60%, of neuropathic pain is localised3 (called localized neuropathic pain, LNP). Patients frequently describe their pain in their own words by using their individual, often very pictographic language e.g. "it feels like a hit from a hammer", "it feels like fire under my skin or an open fresh wound".
In 80% of cases physicians’ over- or underestimate the level of pain-related impairment of their patients.4 If physicians and patients have the same understanding of the impact and the type of pain, treatment success is higher.
Therefore, Grünenthal has developed in collaboration with the Montescano Pain School, Italy, an educational website for patients: www.mypainfeelslike.com.
In this site, patients can understand what type of pains exists, read other patient’s experiences, and use a pain questionnaire which helps the patient to describe in more detail how the pain feels like, how it affects their life and where their pain is allocated. Patients can record their symptoms and then print out the completed questionnaire for their next doctor appointment. This assessment will aid healthcare professionals in the diagnostic process and in choosing the appropriate treatment.
Understand how pain patients feel and visit the website where the pain questionnaire can be taken.
1 Pal M et al (2009). Vanilloid receptor antagonists: emerging class of novel anti-inflammatory agents for pain management. Curr Pharm Des 15:1008-26
2 Dworkin RH, O'Connor AB, Backonja M, et al (2007). Pharmacologic management of neuropathic pain: evidence-based recommendations. Pain;132:237–51
3 Mick G et al (2012). What is localised neuropathic pain? A first proposal to characterise and define a widely used term. Pain manage 2(1), 71-77
4 Müller-Schwefe G., et al (2011)