Abstract
Background In clinical audits in which preoperative visual analog scale (VAS) scores were not
recorded, it would be useful if such scores could be re-created at the time of review.
Patients and Methods We recorded VAS score for pain during the past week before surgery for 245 consecutive
hand-surgery patients scheduled for planned surgery during a 6-month period. A total
of 30 patients who refused to participate or were unable to respond were excluded.
The remaining 215 patients were contacted after 21 months and asked to furnish a new
VAS score of the pain they remembered to have had during the last week before surgery.
Responses were analyzed with a Bland-Altman plot.
Results One hundred and thirty-one (61%) of the patients responded. The mean remembered preoperative
score was higher than the mean real preoperative score in all diagnosis groups. The
mean difference was 10 mm (standard deviation: 22 mm; standard error of the mean:
2 mm). The lower and upper limits of 95% agreement for individual scores were -33
and 53 mm, whereas the lower and upper limits of the 95% confidence interval of the
mean were 6 and 14 mm.
Conclusion It may be possible to predict the mean real preoperative VAS score in groups of patients
with accuracy using the remembered preoperative score. In individual patients, remembered
preoperative VAS scores are far too inaccurate to be of value. However, real preoperative
scores should be used whenever possible.
Keywords
visual analog score - remembered - recall - accuracy - pain
