Development and validation of a ‘Cancer Pain Assessment Scale’ in leukemia patients

Abstract

Background & objectives: Studies have shown that in cancer patients one of the most frequently reported and feared symptoms is unpredictable and uncontrollable pain that drives the individual to desperation and distress. Leukemia patients are not immune to pains of variable severity. So, it is crucial and extremely important to develop a tool that can document the pain experience of adolescents with leukemia for better pain management.

The current study was aimed to develop a scale – ‘Cancer Pain Assessment Scale’ (CPAS) for the assessment of pain experienced by leukemia patients.

Methodology: Initially a semi-structured interview was conducted taking the sample of thirty patients out of whom 19 were males and 11 females. The subjects were then interviewed individually and an item pool of different pain statements explained by them was generated. After the exclusion of repeated and dubious items, the final list of 30 items was handed over to 10 experts for empirical validation. Twenty-five items out of thirty were found appropriate by the experts, and after computing the content validity index (CVI), 23 items were finalized in the final CPAS. To find reliability, a pilot study was done by administering the newly developed scale (CPAS) on 125 cancer patients with prior permission.

Results: By using Principle Component Factor Analysis through Varimax Rotation the results extracted three factors solution of the scale namely physical symptoms, physiological symptoms, and psychosomatic symptoms. The outcomes of the pilot study suggested that the scale items were easy to understand and user-friendly.

Conclusion: The scale has satisfactory internal consistency and concurrent validity. Moreover, the study highlighted the physical and psychosomatic aspects of pain, the finding of which would help the clinicians to design pain management strategies accordingly as per our cultural understanding.

Key words: Pain; Pain, cancer; Psychological effect; Psychosomatic; Leukemia; Depression; Anxiety; Adolescence

Citation: Ikram S, Rafiq M. Development and validation of a Cancer Pain Assessment Scale in leukemia patients. Anaesth. pain intensive care 2021;25(4):436–442. DOI: 10.35975/apic.v25i4.1573

Received: March 26, 2021, Reviewed: May 19, 2021, Accepted: May 19, 2021