title: Characteristics of pain assessed with visual analog scale and questionnaire in burning mouth syndrome patients: a pilot study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To test the validity of the use of the Douleur Neuropathique en 4 Questions (DN4) questionnaire for burning mouth syndrome (BMS) patients, and to differentiate patients by measuring the time course of the pain in BMS patients over a period of 7 days with a visual analog scale (VAS).
  
  
  METHODS
  Patients completed the DN4 questionnaire and a VAS every hour for 7 days. The data were expressed as mean ± SEM. Correlations were searched using the Spearman correlation test with a significance level at P < .05.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Data were fully analyzed for the 22 patients (21 females, 1 male, mean [± SEM] age 62.7 ± 2.3 years) for the DN4 and 17 patients for the VAS. DN4 scores ranged from 2 to 7 (mean score: 3.9 ± 0.3), and 59% of the patients had a DN4 score ≥ 4. Burning was found in all the patients, followed by pricking pain (pins and needles) and allodynia (pain on brushing) (both 68%), tingling (45%), numbness (32%), itching (27%), and electrical discharges (23%). Monitoring the hourly time-course of the pain led to the identification of two groups with intermittent or constant pain. In the latter, averaging the VAS for 7 days enabled plotting a curve, the slope of which could be calculated. The range of the slopes was 0.00 to 0.59, and a regular increase of pain during the day was seen for the majority of the patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings support the use of DN4 as a tool for screening BMS and reinforce the view that BMS is a clinical manifestation of a neuropathic disease. The methodology of this study can be used for a better description of the patients and the identification of subgroups.
authors.affiliation: Universite Paris Denis Diderot, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Adeline
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Braud
authors.forename: Babacar
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Touré
authors.forename: Scarlette
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Agbo-Godeau
authors.forename: Vianney
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Descroix
authors.forename: Yves
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Boucher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002054:Burning Mouth Syndrome / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D002940:Circadian Rhythm; D005157:Facial Pain / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006987:Hypesthesia; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010147:Pain Measurement; D010292:Paresthesia; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011537:Pruritus; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires