• Mark S Wallace, James North, Eric J Grigsby, Leonardo Kapural, Mahendra R Sanapati, Stephen G Smith, Channing Willoughby, Patrick J McIntyre, Steven P Cohen, Richard M Rosenthal, Shaik Ahmed, Ricardo Vallejo, Farshad M Ahadian, Thomas L Yearwood, Allen W Burton, Edward J Frankoski, Jai Shetake, Sherry Lin, Brad Hershey, Benjamin Rogers, and Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov.
• University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, USA.
• Pain Med. 2018 Jul 1; 19 (7): 1425-1435.

ObjectiveDespite the high prevalence of chronic multisite pain, there is little consensus on methods to characterize it. Commonly used assessments report only one dimension of pain, that is, intensity, thus ignoring the spatial aspect of pain. We developed a novel pain quantification index, the Integrated Pain Quantification Index (IPQI), on a scale of 0 to 1 that integrates multiple distinct pain measures into a single value, thus representing multidimensional pain information with a single value.DesignSingle-visit, noninterventional, epidemiological study.SettingFourteen outpatient multidisciplinary pain management programs.PatientsPatients with chronic pain of the trunk and/or limbs for at least six months with average overall pain intensity of at least 5 on the numeric rating scale.MethodsDevelopment of IPQI was performed in a large population (N = 810) of chronic pain patients from the Multiple Areas of Pain (MAP) study.ResultsPrevalence of two or more noncontiguous painful areas was at 88.3% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.86-0.90), with a mean of 6.3 areas (SD = 5.57 areas). Prevalence of more than 10% body area in pain was at 52.8% (95% CI = 0.49-0.56), with a mean at 16.1% (17.16%). On average, IPQI values were near the middle of the scale, with mean and median IPQI at 0.52 (SD = 0.13) and 0.55, respectively. The IPQI was generalizable and clinically relevant across all domains recommended by the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials.ConclusionsIPQI provided a single pain score for representing complex, multidimensional pain information on one scale and has implications for comparing pain populations across longitudinal clinical trials.© 2018 American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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