실험 및 임상 장면에서의 동통 측정법에 관한 고찰

Abstract

Every one suffers from pain due to disease or injury to specific part of his body. Pain may produce various problems physically or psychologically. The present study introduces a variety of pain measurement used in laboratory or in clinical setting. Psychophysics have been widely applied in testing pain mechanisms in normal man. In addition, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and electrical stimulation methods have been adopted in laboratory. Rating scales including visual analog scale (VAS) or verbal pain scale have been used in pain patients. The McGill Pain Questionnaire is useful because it can measure multidimensional property of pain. Descriptor Differential Scale, or behavioral or physiological approaches to the measurement of pain also provide valuable data. Although similar methods as used in adults may be applied to pediatric patients, VAS, Numeric Rating Scale, or Oucher Scale can be used depending on age, intellectual ability and communication ability. These different pain measurement methods may be able to provide important information in study of pain mechanisms in mormal men or pain patients. However, further studies are needed to develop pain measurement techniques which reflect different properties of human pain and have high validity and reliability.