Abstract:

An Expert Working to review the status of the use of pain measurement tools (PMTs), Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) and Questionnaires in Clinical Research. The present work recommends that standardized methods should be applied for the use of PMTs in research. Unidimensional pain measurement tools (PMTs) and multidimensional pain measurement tools (PMTs) designed to assess pain, the McGill Pain Questionnaire and Brief Pain Inventory are valid in many multilingual versions.

The diagnosis and management of hypertension is based on blood pressure (BP) measurements taken by doctors or nurses with conventional sphygmomanometers. Asking the patient to take their own BP at home has been sporadically reported for many years, but the potential value of patient home measurement has been overshadowed by the development of continuous ambulatory BP monitoring.

Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring have been shown to improve the management of hypertension. Twenty practices were asked to monitor hypertensive patients, in particular those about to start drug treatment and those who were poorly controlled.

A good questionnaire design for a clinical trial will minimize bias and maximize precision in the estimates of treatment effect within budget. The mode of administration can also impact on the cost, quality and completeness of data collected. There is good evidence for design features that improve data completeness but further research is required to evaluate strategies in clinical trials. Theory-based guidelines for style, appearance, and layout of self-administered questionnaires have been proposed.

KEYWORDS: pain measurement tools (PMTs), Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), Questionnaire design, Mode of administration, Guidelines.

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