Aging & Health A to Z
Pain Management
Diagnosis & Tests
Evaluation of Pain
Pain is a unique experience and differs from person to person, even when the individuals have similar conditions. Once you have reported that you are in pain, your healthcare provider will try to identify the source and determine proper treatment. You may be asked to keep a pain diary to help describe what is happening on a day-to-day basis.
Your healthcare professional will complete a pain evaluation that will include:
- Questions about your pain. What it feels like (i.e., burning, stabbing, aching, pinching, throbbing), how bad it is, when it started, its pattern or duration, what it is associated with, and how it is affecting your daily life.
- Questions about your health history. This includes any diseases, injuries, or disabilities you have had or diseases that have occurred in your family, and whether you drink alcohol or smoke.
- Questions about what you have done to treat your pain. What works or does not work.
- A complete list of all medications that you take. This includes prescription drugs, herbal remedies, and over-the-counter (non-prescription) products.
- A physical exam.
- Laboratory or imaging studies (such as: x-rays, CT scans, MRI). Your healthcare professional should describe the benefits/risks of any diagnostic tests and explain their benefit in guiding your treatment plan.
Pain Scales
Your healthcare professional may use a pain scale to get a clearer idea of your pain experience. Different types of pain scales that will help you explain your pain include:
- The Numeric Rating Scale on which you choose a number from zero (no pain) to 10 (the worst pain you could imagine)
- Verbal Rating Scale which offers “intensity” words (such as mild, moderate, and severe) or quality words (such as aching, burning, sore, stabbing)
- Faces Pain Rating Scale uses a series of pictures of faces that show different levels of pain expression. You will be asked to choose the face that most closely represents how you are feeling.
There are also simple questionnaires that will help you tell your healthcare professional what your pain is like. These are particularly useful if you have persistent pain, as they gather information on the impact of pain on your function and quality of life. Your healthcare professional may also wish to evaluate the psychological impact of your pain, since most people with chronic pain develop some symptoms of depression or anxiety.
Other tools are available to help identify pain behaviors and changes in pain for those who are unable to self-report their pain.
Updated: March 2012
Posted: March 2012