The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
The use of abstract animations and a graphical body image for assessing pain outcomes among adults with sickle cell disease.
Painimation, a novel digital pain assessment tool, allows patients to communicate their pain quality, intensity, and location using abstract animations (painimations) and a paintable body image. This study determined the construct validity of painimations and body image measures by testing correlations with validated pain outcomes in adults with sickle cell disease (SCD). Analyses used baseline data from a multisite randomized trial of 359 adults with SCD and chronic pain. ⋯ This demonstrates animations and body image data can assess SCD pain severity, potentially with more accuracy than a 0-10 scale. Future research will explore whether Painimation can differentiate biological and psychosocial pain components. PERSPECTIVE: This article presents the preliminary construct validity of Painimation in SCD by examining the associations of "painimations" and body area image data with daily e-diary and traditional self-report pain outcomes.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Attention and Nocebo Hyperalgesia: Testing a Novel Virtual Reality Attention Bias Modification Paradigm.
Nocebo effects in pain (nocebo hyperalgesia) have received significant attention recently, with negative expectancies and anxiety proposed to be explanatory factors. While both expectancy and anxiety can bias attention, attention has been rarely explored as a potential mechanism involved in nocebo hyperalgesia. The present study aimed to explore whether attention bias modification (ABM) using an immersive, ecologically valid VR paradigm successfully induced attention biases (AB) and subsequently influenced nocebo hyperalgesia. ⋯ Unexpected effects of ABM were observed for state anxiety and anticipatory anxiety, whereby training away from pain exacerbated each, which necessitates further exploration. PERSPECTIVE: This article tests the efficacy of a novel attention bias modification paradigm, designed in virtual reality, for inducing pain-related biases, and whether these biases exacerbate or inoculate against nocebo hyperalgesia. While pain-related biases were successfully induced, there was no relationship with the strength of induced nocebo hyperalgesia.