Author Spotlight: Quantifying Pain Experience – An Illustrative Approach Using the Pain Body Diagram

Pain is a subjective, multifaceted experience that can be difficult to assess using numerical rating scales or surveys with descriptors. Here, we demonstrate how to quantitatively capture pain location and severity in a combined illustrative tool, the pain body diagram. The numerical rating scale, asking patients to rate pain from 0 to 10, is the most commonly used pain-rating tool.

The visual analog scale, rating pain from 0 to 100, was designed to minimize anchoring bias which can skew reported values despite varying pain levels. Additionally, the McGill Pain Questionnaire helps understand pain's somatosensory and emotional aspects through descriptive prompts. Pain body diagrams have been used as a pain-assessment tool to track pain symptoms longitudinally.

Sex-specific diagrams allow for respondents to better identify and report pain. In addition, the inclusion of color to signify intensity allows for effective communication of pain across cultural and language barriers. Pain is a ubiquitous yet complex experience.

While verbal descriptors and visual sliders are the current gold standard of pain metrics, they neglect the origin of pain on the layout of the body itself. Future PBD iterations could be expanded to represent the somatization of pain or visceral pain in a quantifiable method. Additionally, this tool could pave the way to understand pain treatments, such as our laboratory's larger focus on deep brain stimulation.