Daniela Cunha - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
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In patients with impaired consciousness, pain self-assessment is impracticable and communication ... more In patients with impaired consciousness, pain self-assessment is impracticable and communication is compromised, therefore challenging assessment by health care professionals. This causes the use of valid and trustful scales to become fundamental. The present study aims to evaluate the clinical potential of the existent scales for the assessment of pain in patients with impaired consciousness. The literature review comprehends the time frame from January of 2005 to June of 2011 based on two search engines and three databases. A total of 654 abstracts and titles were analyzed, 16 papers were selected for a full body revision of which 8 comprise within the present review. Three university archives were visualized and only 1 paper was included herein. Seven distinct assessments of pain scales were identified in patients presenting impaired consciousness. Only one of the scales took into account physiological and behavioral indicators, whereas the remaining others included solely behavi...
Assessing behavioral responses to nociception is difficult in severely brain-injured patients rec... more Assessing behavioral responses to nociception is difficult in severely brain-injured patients recovering from coma. We here propose a new scale developed for assessing nociception in vegetative (VS) and minimally conscious (MCS) coma survivors, the Nociception Coma Scale (NCS), and explore its concurrent validity, inter-rater agreement and sensitivity. Concurrent validity was assessed by analyzing behavioral responses of 48 post-comatose patients to a noxious stimulation (pressure applied to the fingernail) (28 VS and 20 MCS; age range 20-82 years; 17 of traumatic etiology). Patients' were assessed using the NCS and four other scales employed in non-communicative patients: the 'Neonatal Infant Pain Scale' (NIPS) and the 'Faces, Legs, Activity, Cry, Consolability' (FLACC) used in newborns; and the 'Pain Assessment In Advanced Dementia Scale' (PAINAD) and the 'Checklist of Non-verbal Pain Indicators' (CNPI) used in dementia. For the establishment of inter-rater agreement, fifteen patients were concurrently assessed by two examiners. Concurrent validity, assessed by Spearman rank order correlations between the NCS and the four other validated scales, was good. Cohen's kappa analyses revealed a good to excellent inter-rater agreement for the NCS total and subscore measures, indicating that the scale yields reproducible findings across examiners. Finally, a significant difference between NCS total scores was observed as a function of diagnosis (i.e., VS or MCS). The NCS constitutes a sensitive clinical tool for assessing nociception in severely brain-injured patients. This scale constitutes the first step to a better management of patients recovering from coma.
In patients with impaired consciousness, pain self-assessment is impracticable and communication ... more In patients with impaired consciousness, pain self-assessment is impracticable and communication is compromised, therefore challenging assessment by health care professionals. This causes the use of valid and trustful scales to become fundamental. The present study aims to evaluate the clinical potential of the existent scales for the assessment of pain in patients with impaired consciousness. The literature review comprehends the time frame from January of 2005 to June of 2011 based on two search engines and three databases. A total of 654 abstracts and titles were analyzed, 16 papers were selected for a full body revision of which 8 comprise within the present review. Three university archives were visualized and only 1 paper was included herein. Seven distinct assessments of pain scales were identified in patients presenting impaired consciousness. Only one of the scales took into account physiological and behavioral indicators, whereas the remaining others included solely behavi...
Assessing behavioral responses to nociception is difficult in severely brain-injured patients rec... more Assessing behavioral responses to nociception is difficult in severely brain-injured patients recovering from coma. We here propose a new scale developed for assessing nociception in vegetative (VS) and minimally conscious (MCS) coma survivors, the Nociception Coma Scale (NCS), and explore its concurrent validity, inter-rater agreement and sensitivity. Concurrent validity was assessed by analyzing behavioral responses of 48 post-comatose patients to a noxious stimulation (pressure applied to the fingernail) (28 VS and 20 MCS; age range 20-82 years; 17 of traumatic etiology). Patients' were assessed using the NCS and four other scales employed in non-communicative patients: the 'Neonatal Infant Pain Scale' (NIPS) and the 'Faces, Legs, Activity, Cry, Consolability' (FLACC) used in newborns; and the 'Pain Assessment In Advanced Dementia Scale' (PAINAD) and the 'Checklist of Non-verbal Pain Indicators' (CNPI) used in dementia. For the establishment of inter-rater agreement, fifteen patients were concurrently assessed by two examiners. Concurrent validity, assessed by Spearman rank order correlations between the NCS and the four other validated scales, was good. Cohen's kappa analyses revealed a good to excellent inter-rater agreement for the NCS total and subscore measures, indicating that the scale yields reproducible findings across examiners. Finally, a significant difference between NCS total scores was observed as a function of diagnosis (i.e., VS or MCS). The NCS constitutes a sensitive clinical tool for assessing nociception in severely brain-injured patients. This scale constitutes the first step to a better management of patients recovering from coma.