Pain
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Single vs composite measures of pain intensity: relative sensitivity for detecting treatment effects.
Assay sensitivity remains a significant issue in pain clinical trials. One possible method for increasing assay sensitivity for detecting changes in pain intensity is to increase the reliability of pain intensity assessment by increasing the number of intensity ratings obtained, and combining these ratings into composite scores. The current study performed secondary analyses from a published clinical trial to test this possibility. ⋯ If this finding replicates in other pain populations, it has significant implications for the design and conduct of pain clinical trials. Specifically, it suggests the possibility that assessment burden (and associated costs and problems related to missing data) might be greatly reduced by specifying a single recall rating as the primary outcome variable. Research is needed to explore this possibility further.