COMPARISON OF VALIDITY OF LANSS AND DN4 QUESTIONNAIRES FOR THE DETECTION OF PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHIC PAIN IN THE SPANISH POPULATION

Hamdan A*, Luna JD*, Del Pozo E*, Gómez Armenta F, Rubio A, Gálvez R**.

* Universidad de Granada

**Unidad del Dolor. Hospital Virgen de las Nieves. España. 

Aims: To compare the diagnostic accuracy of the LANSS and the DN4 questionnaire for the detection and assessment of peripheral neuropathic pain in the Spanish population, and to analyze in detail the diagnostic quality of each item in these questionnaires.

Methods: A total of 192 patients (n=121 with peripheral neuropathic pain and n=71 with nociceptive pain) were enrolled. We compared the validity of the DN4 and LANSS questionnaires by studying sensitivity and specificity and using (ROC) curve analysis. We also analyzed the validity of each item in the questionnaires. 

Results: The sensitivity of the DN4 with an accepted cut-off value of ≥4 was 95.04%, and sensitivity of the LANSS with an accepted cut-off value of ≥12 was 80.17%. The specificity of the DN4 was 97.18% and that of the LANSS was 100%. The estimated area under the ROC curve (95% CI) was 0.989 (0.977-1) for the DN4 and 0.973 (0.956-0.991) for the LANSS. The AUC was significantly larger for the DN4 than the LANSS (p < 0.05). Analyses of specific items showed that tingling and numbness in the DN4, and light touch pain and altered pinprick threshold in the LANSS, were the most important features of neuropathic pain.

Conclusions: These results show that although both questionnaires are good screening tools, the DN4 questionnaire is particularly recommended for identifying patients with neuropathic pain in clinical practice and research studies.

Conference Title

10th national congress of Spanish pain society

Conference Country

Spain

Conference Date

April 10, 2013 - April 13, 2013

Conference Sponsor

Spanish Pain society

Additional Info

Conference Website