Table 4:

Patient Stakeholder Quotes Illustrating Reasons for Ranking a Pain Index as Most Important

Pain index % patients ranking it most important	Patient Quotes
Worst Pain 30.9%	“Once you’ve reached that plateau, it’s very hard to come off it. Once your pain reaches that level, it is hard to get it back down to where it is manageable.” “Nobody really wants to be in pain. Your goal is not to have any pain at all but of course you’re not gonna achieve that anyway. But you really want to get rid of the intense pain.”
Time in High Pain 30.6%	“I can live with the little or moderate pain….I have a high pain threshold anyway….if I can deal with the amount of time in high pain better, then I can spend more time walking around, going out, being more sociable, rather than having to sit down a lot.”
Pain Variability 16.0%	“The reason it’s more important is because I can wake up with a 4 and by the end of the day it’s an 8 … whatever the reason the pain fluctuates….there’s no consistency in my pain….how it fluctuates during the day….there is so much change in the fluctuation in my day-to-day pain….it’s more stress than just the pain.”
Pain Unpredictability 10.7%	“Cause you never know how you’re gonna feel from day to day, every day of the week, when you get up in the morning,….if the day is gonna go bad or if you will be depressed, you can’t do anything.”