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The Symptom Impact Questionnaire may have advantages over the Polysymptomatic Distress Scale
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The Symptom Impact Questionnaire, an updated version of the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire, may be more effective than the Polysymptomatic Distress Scale to evaluate the symptom severity experienced by patients with fibromyalgia and chronic pain, according to recently published research.
Researchers recruited 321 patients with chronic pain, including fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, chronic low back pain, chronic migraine headaches, rheumatoid arthritis, major depressive disorder, peripheral neuropathy, chronic upper back pain, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren’s syndrome, psoriatic arthritis, focal myofascial pain, ankylosing spondylitis and polymyalgia rheumatica. About half of patients with fibromyalgia reported a concomitant medical diagnosis, including diabetes (8.1%), cancer (6.7%), asthma (6.7%) and heart disease (5.2%).
Patients were clinically evaluated and administered the Symptom Impact Questionnaire (SIQR), the Short Form-36 (SF-36) and the Polysymptomatic Distress Scale (PSD), which combines the Widespread Pain Index and the Symptom Severity Scale. The results of the SIQR and PSD were compared with the SF-36.
Analyses showed larger correlations with the SF-36 in all eight questions on the SIQR compared with the corresponding eight parameters in the PSD. The largest difference was observed for SF-36 physical and pain domains and the SSS symptom scales. Similar differences were detected between patients with and without fibromyalgia, with stronger correlations to the SF-36 using the SIQR compared with the PSD.
Twenty-five of the 30 comparisons had significantly greater correlations with the SF-36 compared with the PSD. None of the questions in the PSD had a greater correlation with any of the questions in the SF-36 compared with the SIQR, and more variability was observed between the PSD and SF-36 scales. Multivariate analysis showed low correlations between the PSD and the SF-36 pain scale. – by Shirley Pulawski
Disclosure s : The researchers report the research was supported by the Fibromyalgia Information Foundation.
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