Establishing the Minimal Clinically Important Difference and Substantial Clinical Benefit for the Pain Visual Analog Scale in a Postoperative Hand Surgery Population.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Although the pain visual analog scale (VAS-pain) is a ubiquitous patient-reported outcome instrument, it remains unclear how to interpret changes or differences in scores. Therefore, our purpose was to calculate the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) and substantial clinical benefit (SCB) for the VAS-pain instrument in a nonshoulder hand and upper extremity postoperative population.

Methods

Adult postoperative patients treated by 1 of 5 fellowship-trained orthopedic hand surgeons at a single tertiary academic medical center were identified. Inclusion required VAS-pain scores at baseline (up to 3 months before surgery) and follow-up (up to 4 months after surgery), in addition to a response to a pain-specific anchor question at follow-up. The MCID estimates

SUBMITTER: Randall DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9271584 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature