Idiographic measurement of depressive thinking: development and preliminary validation of the Sentence Completion Test for Chronic Pain (SCP).

Background and aims Depression is a common feature of chronic pain, but there is only limited research into the content and frequency of depressed cognitions in pain patients. This study describes the development of the Sentence Completion Test for Chronic Pain (SCP), an idiographic measure for assessing depressive thinking in chronic pain patients. The sentence completion task requires participants to finish incomplete sentences using their own words to a set of predefined stems that include negative, positive and neutral valenced self-referenced words.

Fear of movement/(Re)injury in low back pain: confirmatory validation of a German version of the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia.

Background: The Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK), an instrument for measuring fear of movement/(re)injury, has been confirmed as an important predictor for the persistence of pain-related disability. The aims of this study were to evaluate the psychometric properties of a German version of the TSK (TSK-GV), examining aspects of content validity with special focus on fear-avoidance and endurance, and to confirm criterion-related validity in patients with low back pain (LBP).

Methods: A total of 191 patients with LBP were included in this study.

The relationship between pain, disability, quality of life and cognitive-behavioural factors in chronic back pain.

Purpose: This pilot study systematically examined the correlations between the outcome variables pain intensity, disability and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and between these outcomes and known psychological risk factors for chronic low back pain (CLBP), such as depression, trait anxiety, avoidance- and endurance-related pain responses at two different assessment points.

Method: Data from 52 CLBP inpatients treated in an orthopedic clinic were investigated at two points in time: during the first days after admission and 6 months after the termination of the inpatient treatment. Bivariate relationships between pain intensity, disability, HRQOL and psychological variables were examined with the help of Pearson product moment correlations.

Pain-related avoidance versus endurance in primary care patients with subacute back pain: psychological characteristics and outcome at a 6-month follow-up.

Recent research has found individual differences in back pain patients due to behavioral avoidance vs persistence. However, there is a lack of prospective studies of nonspecific low back pain patients. The avoidance-endurance model (AEM) suggests at least 3 pathways leading to chronic pain: fear-avoidance response, distress-endurance response, and eustress-endurance response.

Fear-avoidance- and endurance-related responses to pain: development and validation of the Avoidance-Endurance Questionnaire (AEQ).

Aim Of Investigation: Recent research indicated wide variability regarding pain-related cognitive/affective and behavioral responses to pain, showing that fear-avoidance responses (FAR) and endurance-responses (ER) play a prominent role in the maintenance of low back pain (LBP). Until now, there is a lack of reliable and valid instruments covering FAR and ER.

Methods: A pool of 60 items, derived from the Kiel Pain Inventory was answered by 191 LBP patients.

Classification of psychosocial risk factors (yellow flags) for the development of chronic low back and leg pain using artificial neural network.

Due to international guidelines of treatment of acute low back pain (LBP), psychosocial risk factors like depressive mood and maladaptive pain-related coping strategies ('yellow flags') have to be assessed in the early phase of acute pain. Within this longitudinal study in patients with LBP and leg pain, we used an artificial neural network (ANN) to classify the pain intensity 6 months after the onset of treatment. Psychosocial risk factors were used as input neurons.

Validation and reliability of the German version of the Chronic Pain Grade questionnaire in primary care back pain patients.

In 1992 Von Korff and his co-workers developed a simple, brief questionnaire to assess the severity of chronic pain problems, the Chronic Pain Grade (CPG). The present study was conducted to analyse the psychometric properties of the translated German version of the CPG within a population of primary care back pain patients (n=130). Factor analysis yielded two factors which accounted for 72% of the variance of the questionnaire.