Comparing chronic pain from spinal cord injury to chronic pain of other origins.

Acknowledged as a serious complaint of spinal cord injured (SCI) patients, chronic pain in this population is neither well studied nor well understood. To assess the quality and intensity of pain, a group of 49 SCI patients seeking treatment for chronic pain was compared to a general group of 95 patients from the Comprehensive Pain Clinic (CPC) on selected demographic variables, the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The SCI patients were categorized as functionally incomplete SCI (SCI-I) or complete SCI (SCI-C). Multivariate analyses revealed differences among groups on the MPQ for Number of Words Checked, Rank Sum, and the Affective dimension. In all cases the CPC group scored higher than the SCI-C group. The MMPI profiles were elevated and typical for the CPC and SCI-C groups and substantially less elevated for the SCI-I group. We suggest in cases where chronic pain is secondary to a chronic medical catastrophe, aspects of the MPQ and the MMPI assess the person's total medical disability and not just the meaning and impact of pain.