Test-retest reliability of pain extent and pain location using a novel pain drawing analysis software application, on patients with shoulder pain

ObjectivesA method of pain assessment is the drawing of pain on a specially designed manikin where the patients color the area representing their pain distribution. In recent years, software applications have been developed for the purpose of digital pain drawing data acquisition and processing. Although such specific software applications have already been released, they have been built with obsolete programming tools. The purpose of the study was to investigate the test - retest reliability of a new pain drawing analysis software, in a sample of patients with shoulder pain.MethodsData collected from 31 subjects with shoulder pain. Participants were asked twice to color their pain distribution in the painting environment of a tablet software application called 'Pain Distribution.'ResultsThe reliability of pain extent was found to be good (ICC = 0.80). The Jaccard index for the reliability of pain location was found to be moderate, equal to 42.02 +/- 19.13%.ConclusionThe results demonstrated good reliability of pain extent and moderate reliability of pain location using the new pain distribution analysis application 'Pain Distribution.' This pain drawing software application could be a reliable, inexpensive, and clinically usable solution for assessing the distribution of pain in patients with shoulder pain.