Table 1.
Core phenotyping domains and recommended measures.
| Domain | Recommended Measure(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|
|
| ||
| Psychosocial | Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) | 14 items, 7 assessing depressive symptoms, 7 assessing anxiety symptoms. Total score can be used as a measure of global negative affect (180). |
| Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) | 13 items, comprising 3 inter-correlated subscales: Magnification, Rumination, and Helplessness. The PCS is well-validated in patient and healthy samples, and is the most-commonly used measure of pain catastrophizing in the field (225). | |
| PROMIS Subscales | A set of patient-reported health status measures that provide information about physical, mental/emotional, and social wellbeing. The measures can be administered in a variety of formats (e.g., using computerized adaptive testing) (49). | |
| Consider: SCL-90 Somatization Scale and/or PILL | ||
|
| ||
| Pain Qualities | Variability in Pain Intensity | Generally assessed using daily diary methodologies, with computation of the degree of variability across time for individual patients (89). |
| Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire 2 (SF-MPQ-2) | A revision of the widely-used MPQ, which assessed sensory, affective, and cognitive/evaluative pain descriptors. The SF-MPQ-2 has 22 items assessing a variety of pain qualities (79). | |
| Pain Quality Assessment Scale (PQAS) | 20 items evaluating neuropathic and non-neuropathic pain qualities (e.g., hot, sharp, shooting) (253). | |
| painDETECT | 9-Item instrument to assess the neuropathic components of pain. Scores identify respondents as either “likely”, “unlikely”, or uncertain in terms of the probability of having neuropathic pain. It has good sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value in identifying neuropathic pain (98). | |
| Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory (NPSI) | 12-item measure that queries respondents about the degree of neuropathic pain symptoms (e.g., “Does your pain feel like electric shocks?”) over the past 24 hours. It has good sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value in identifying neuropathic pain (10). | |
|
| ||
| Sleep | Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) | Well-validated 19-item measure assessing sleep quality and sleep disruption over the past month (Buysse, Reynolds et al., 1989). |
| Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) | 7-item scale assessing the severity and impact of insomnia symptoms over the prior 2 weeks (22). | |
| Consider: Wrist actigraphy and a fatigue VAS or the MFI | ||
|
| ||
| Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) | DFNS testing battery, when applicable | Includes detection and pain thresholds for thermal and mechanical stimuli, allodynia, temporal summation, etc. (104;161;203) |
| Consider: Freeman et al., “bedside” QST battery | ||
|
| ||
| Conditioned Pain Modulation (CPM) | Yarnitsky et al. thermal CPM testing paradigm | Change in pain intensity of a phasic contact heat stimulus during hand immersion in painfully hot water (269). |
|
| ||
| Pharmacologic Challenge | No general recommendations | |
CPM= Conditioned Pain Modulation; DFNS= German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (translated); HADS= Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; ISI= Insomnia Severity Index; LBP= Low Back Pain; MFI= Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory; NPSI= Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory; PCS= Pain Catastrophizing Scale; PILL= Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness; PROMIS= Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System; PQAS= Pain Quality Assessment Scale; PSQI= Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; QST= Quantitative Sensory Testing; SCL= Symptom Checklist; SF-MPQ= Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire; StEP= Standardized Evaluation of Pain; VAS= Visual Analog Scale