W414 痛みの定量計測法の開発と評価(診断技術, 生理計測)(シンポジウム : 福祉工学)

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Pain is a person's subjective perception of an uncomfortable response to harmful stimulation to the body. Even when the diagnosis of the cause of the pain is identical, the perception of pain among different subjects can be quite different in terms of intensity and type of feeling. Pain is, therefore, an individual and subjective phenomenon. We have developed a system that makes possible the quantitative measurement of human clinical pain. In this system, measured values are obtained making use of the subject's reporting of their own sensations. The concept of pain quantification is to compare the magnitude of the subject's pain to the magnitude of a non-painful electric stimulus and measure it. A pulse current is applied to the subject's forearm, and the subject compares the magnitude of this sensation to the magnitude of pain. The electric current (pain equivalency current) is recorded and compared against a minimum perception current. Quantification is obtained by deriving a pain ratio, the value of which is obtained by dividing the pain equivalency current by the minimum perception current. The device is operated by a conventional personal computer system using a graphical user interface. All measurement sequences, data filling, printing and other functions for the pain evaluation are designed as a single application software system. Using this system, we have successfully measured the magnitude of pain both for subjects in controlled experiments and patients undergoing physical therapy. Through the experiments, followings phenomena were confirmed. 1) There were no differences in the sensitivity to electrical perception current between the right and left arms, 2) the minimum perception current was not affected by the magnitude of pain, 3) a larger magnitude of pain showed a larger pain ratio, and 4) the subjects were able to differentiate pains for the quantitative determination of each pain. The values of the pain ratio determined from actual patients were clearly decreased after treatment. These quantitative values were compared with a conventional visual analog scale (pain scale) to clinically evaluate the usefulness of this method. The values of both our system's pain ratio and the pain scale indicated the improvement of pain, but a clear correlation between them was not observed. This result is due mainly to the subjective meaning of the quantification in the visual analog scale. We can conclude that both of the subjective and quantitative measurement of pain should be important to evaluate the actual pain.
2001-08-03

W414 痛みの定量計測法の開発と評価(診断技術, 生理計測)(シンポジウム : 福祉工学)

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