BACKGROUND: Effective quantitative assessment of acute pain as an urgent problem in clinical medicine. One of the solutions to this problem is a color discrete scale (CDS).
AIM: To determine the efficacy of the clinical usage of color discrete scale compared with linear visual analog scale to assess acute pain in women after radical mastectomy.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study includes a prospective, observational, and non-randomized clinical trial. A total of 110 females who underwent radical mastectomy (RM) were interviewed. We used a 100-point linear visual analog scale (lVAS) and CDS with monotonic (mCDS) and random (rCDS) color arrangement. Pain was assessed 2, 6, 12, 24, 48, and 72 h after surgery.
RESULTS: Pain scores obtained 2 h after RM were 6 (0; 30), 12 (0; 24), 8 (0; 20) points according to IVAS, mCDS, and rCDS, respectively (p 0.05). Furthermore, the pain scores were gradually reduced on all three scales and had no statistically significant difference (p 0.05). In women who underwent paravertebral blockade (PVB), pain scores were significantly less at 2, 6, 12, and 48 h after surgery (p 0.05). Spearmans correlation coefficient for lVAS and mCDS is 0.90, 0.86 for lVAS and rCDS, and 0.90 for mCDS and rCDS (all p 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS: The CDS is an alternative, independent, and sufficient tool for quantifying pain. A strong correlation was found between the pain assessments according to CDS and lVAS. PVB significantly improves the quality of pain relief after RM.