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Objectives

Self-report is the “gold standard” for pain assessment, however, observational pain scales, such as Doloplus-2 must be used for patients who cannot communicate. In this follow-up study, we report the psychometric properties of the observational Doloplus-2 scale using the visual analog scale (VAS) pain score as a gold standard and evaluate its performance.

Method

Prospective clinical study of 180 hospitalized older patients who demonstrated good comprehension and reliable use of the VAS: 131 participants with dementia and 49 without. All participants assessed their chronic pain using the VAS. Doloplus-2 was independently completed by the nursing team.

Results

Mean age of patients (133 women, 47 men) was 83.7±6.5. Median mini-mental state examination of patients with diagnosis of dementia was 18.0±7.7. Nearly half of the patients (49%) reported that they experienced pain in response to a …