Pain description and severity of chronic orofacial pain conditions

A multidisciplinary pain centre study of 120 consecutive chronic orofacial pain patients assessed pain description and intensity ratings, gender differences, prevalence of concurrent conditions, and interinstrument relationships of the McGill Pain Questionnaire and visual analogue scale. Pain words chosen by patients to describe conditions were predominantly sensory words, and patients with concurrent conditions often listed words indicating a substantial affective component. Results showed pain intensity ratings of chronic orofacial pain conditions have similar or higher pain ratings when compared with other medical chronic pain conditions such as back pain, cancer pain and arthritis. There was a significantly higher female: male ratio (88:32) with gender playing an important but poorly understood causal role. The most frequent condition diagnosed was atypical facial pain (n = 40), followed by temporomandibular disorder (n = 32), atypical odontalgia (n = 29) and pathology of the orofacial region (n = 19). Temporomandibular disorder was present in 75 of the 120 subjects, as the sole pain complaint (n = 32) or as an associated secondary condition (n = 43), indicating concurrent pain conditions exist and may be related. There were significantly higher total pain scores of the McGill Pain Questionnaire in patients with multiple conditions compared with patients with a single condition. The visual analogue scale showed a significant correlation to the number of words chosen index of the McGill Pain Questionnaire for orofacial pain.