Validation of the Traditional Chinese-Cantonese Version of Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (C-SF-MPQ-2)

Pain is defined as "An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage." In particular, chronic pain has significant impact on health care cost and socio-economic aspects of the society. It is clear that the development of effective chronic pain management is paramount in reducing the significant socio-economic burden of this common healthcare problem.

One of the difficulties in measuring outcomes in chronic pain patients is the subjective nature of pain. The McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) was developed in 1975 with the aim of quantifying the subjective pain experiences of patients. Since then it has become one of the major assessment tools in evaluation of chronic pain patients during the course of treatments. The Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) developed in 1987 has further refined pain descriptors into "sensory" and "affective" domains, and incorporating the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for easier administration in hospitals and clinics. The validity and reliability of both the original English and translated versions of MPQ and SF-MPQ have been well demonstrated. The latest version of Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ-2) included descriptive terms for neuropathic pain which expanded the scope of coverage on chronic neuropathic pain patients. It has also been evaluated in cancer pain patients. Translated versions of SF-MPQ-2 showed good reliability and validity. Therefore the investigators devised this study to (1) translate SF-MPQ-2 into Traditional Chinese-Cantonese (C-SF-MPQ-2) suitable for use in Hong Kong patients, (2) examine the validity, reliability and psychometric properties of this translated version in Hong Kong patients.