The visual time analog scale: simple, novel measurement approach to assess pain in patients with chronic pain

Abstract

Aim: We conducted a preliminary evaluation of a newly developed, time-based visual time analog (VITA) scale for measuring pain in chronic pain patients. Materials & methods: 40 patients with chronic back pain rated their pain over four visits using numerical (pain) rating scale (NRS) and VITA assessing pain intensity by distributing the amount of time spent on ‘not aware of pain’ (blue), ‘aware of nothing but pain’ (red) and time in between (yellow). Results: The NRS scores were correlated with the VITA Red but not with VITA Blue. The psychometric analyses revealed that VITA achieved greater reliability and sensitivity than did NRS. Conclusion: The results provide preliminary support for VITA scale for assessing pain intensity in patients with chronic pain.