The limits of verbal pain descriptors.
The evidence that verbal descriptors can reliably portray the sensory and affective qualities of pain states and various clinical groupings of pain patients is examined. Support for the proposition that different pain syndromes can be distinguished on the basis of such word patterns is lacking.
D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000503:physiopathology; D010003:Osteoarthritis / Q000503:physiopathology; D010146:Pain / Q000145:classification / Q000523:psychology*; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior