PAIN DURING MAMMOGRAPHY - CHARACTERISTICS AND RELATIONSHIP TO DEMOGRAPHIC AND MEDICAL VARIABLES

Reports of pain during mammography show that there is great variabilit y in both the incidence of reported pain (0.2-62%) and the intensity o f that pain. Much of that variability may be due to the measures used to rate mammography pain. This is the first study that has examined th e incidence, quality and intensity of mammography pain using a variety of pain measures. A sample of 119 women undergoing screening mammogra phy was studied using four pain scales, three well-validated measures frequently used in the pain research literature as well as a pain/disc omfort measure frequently reported in the radiology literature. A larg e proportion (up to 91%) of women report having some degree of pain du ring mammography. The intensity of that pain was typically in the low to moderate range, but a small proportion of women (< 15%) reported in tense pain. The incidence of reported pain was related to the pain mea sure used. Pain measures that provided a woman with many options for r eporting pain were associated with a higher incidence of pain than a s cale that provided only one or two options. Thus, some of the variabil ity in reported incidence of pain during mammography can be explained by the pain scale used in the study. Demographic and medical variables could explain 18-20% of the variance in mammography pain. Two of the variables that were shown to consistently predict a painful mammograph ic experience were (1) average pain at the last mammogram and (2) brea st density. This study demonstrated that the pain measure selected for use in a particular study may depend on the population being studied. A college education was found to be an important predictor of pain sc ores on the McGill Pain Questionnaire. Thus, this pain measure may be of limited usefulness in studying a population of women with little fo rmal education.