Presented at the 2012 AAPM Annual Meeting « Back

New Approaches in the Use of Daily Body-Grams in Studies and Analysis of Pain: The PiSCES Project

Bassam Dahman, PhD, bdahman@vcu.edu¹, Wally R. Smith, PhD¹, (1) Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia

Introduction: Body-grams are widely used in studies of pain in several chronic diseases. There is a lack of studies that explore the several uses and data manipulations of daily body-grams that have great potential in improving the diagnosis and treatment of pain. We explored the use of cluster analysis in determining pain patterns and sites in sickle cell disease (SCD), as well as graphical representations of pain maps. Methods: 230 adults in the prospective Pain in Sickle Cell Epidemiology Study (PiSCES) filled body-grams daily for up to six months. Subjects also recorded the SCD pain intensity and utilization of health care for SCD. Baseline data included demographics, genotype, Patient Health Questionnaire SF36. We used cluster analysis to group locations of pain, and to show whether different anatomical sites grouped differently by utilization. We collapsed the daily body-grams into summary pain body-grams that represented frequency and intensity of pain across patients and time. Results: Pain locations were clustered into areas that mirrored anecdotal recollections by patients and caregivers of anatomical regions commonly affected by SCD. Extremities were more associated with utilization (fig1). Graphical colored maps visually clarified differences in pain experiences between different groups of patients or health states (Fig2). Conclusions: Body-grams are very useful tools in summarizing the experience of acute and pain across patients, time, and diseases. There appears to be a growing utility of universal templates for representation of pain, and accompanying databases, to collect and interpret this type of data. References: 1)Smith WR, McClish DK, Penberthy LT, Bovbjerg VE, Dahman BA, Roberts JD, Aisiku IP, Levenson JL, Roseff SD. Daily assessment of pain in adults with sickle cell disease. Ann Intern Med 2008 Jan 15, 148(2):94-101.

Funding: Grant Support by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (1R01HL64122-01A1).