The McGill Pain Questionnaire_.pdf

CLASSIC PAPERS REVISITED Srinivasa N. Raja, M.D., Editor Anesthesiology 2005; 103:199–202 © 2005 American Society of Anesthesiologists, Inc. Lippincott Williams Wilkins, Inc. The McGill Pain Questionnaire From Description to Measurement Ronald Melzack, Ph.D.* On the language of pain. By Ronald Melzack, Warren S. there are many words in the English language to describe Torgerson. ANESTHESIOLOGY 1971; 34:50–9. Reprinted the varieties of pain experience; 2) there is a high level of with permission. agreement that the words fall into classes and subclasses that represent particular dimensions or properties of The purpose of this study was to develop new pain experience; 3) substantial portions of the words approaches to the problem of describing and mea- have approximately the same relative positions on a suring pain in human subjects. Words used to de- common intensity scale for people who have widely di- scribe pain were brought together and categorized, vergent backgrounds. The word lists provide a basis for a and an attempt was made to scale them on a com- questionnaire to study the effects of anesthetic and anal- mon intensity dimension. The data show that: 1) gesic agents on the experience of pain. HISTORY has always fascinated me, particularly the dif- measurement (based on the heat increase between the ficulty of reconstructing events that occurred in the two thresholds) was called a dol. In the numerous stud- recent past, such as battles during wa