Pain patterns in lumbar disc hernia: Drawings compared to surgical findings in 159 patients

Abstract

We compared preoperative pain-drawing patterns of 159 patients with findings at lumbar disc surgery. Disc pathology was classified into 2 groups: intact anulus (negative exploration and protruding disc) and ruptured anulus (subligamentary perforation and sequestrated hernia). Patients with intact anulus drew fewer modalities, but more often marked pain in the trunk, neck and upper extremities, than those with ruptured anulus. Certain pain-drawing patterns-e.g., extra text, arrows and nonanatomical pain distribution-have previously been shown to correlate to unfavorable pathological traits in psychometric tests in populations of patients with chronic low back pain. in our study, most of these so-called nonorganic pain-pattern items occurred equally often in the 2 groups. in fact, one third of the patients with ruptured anulus produced pathological drawings according to the scoring system designed by Ransford et al. (1976). Although pain drawings help the investigator to obtain a rapid overview of the patient's pain pattern, the use of penalty points as a preoperative psychological screening instrument in patients with pain that is not chronic may be questioned.