American Pain Society's 27th Annual Scientific Meeting (May 8 – 10, 2008): Quantitative Sensory Testing for Pain Research and Clinical Practice

Quantitative sensory testing (QST) is a well-established psychophysical method for the study of the pathophysiology of pain. Though very successful in the laboratory, the wider clinical acceptance of QST has been limited due to lack of standardization of the testing procedure and interpretation of results. The Neuropathic Pain Research Consortium (NPRC) has developed a protocol which is based on well published methodology for testing the full range of mechanical and thermal stimuli. The NPRC standardized method utilizes subjects’ psychophysical ratings of the set of mechanical and thermal stimuli as the basis for the quantification, rather then sole reliance on the threshold determination. This approach leads to a greater understanding of the severity and nature of evoked sensations including pain, and is very time efficient. In this symposium M. Backonja will review the conceptual underpinning of QST, such as pain mechanisms that could be tested with QST, which would be the basis for understanding the types of information that could be obtained by QST. D. Walk will describe elements which constitute the QST protocol developed by NPRC, specifically methods of how to conduct the testing. N. Sehgal will present normative data obtained by this approach and describe interpretation of the data. M. Wallace will discuss the range of applications for this QST protocol in pain research and clinical practice.