Acute versus chronic pain experience in Alzheimer's disease - A new questionnaire

The low use of analgesics in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), compar ed to nondemented elderly persons, is generally explained by (1) a lower pr evalence of painful conditions in the former group and (2) undertreatment o f pain due to a decrease in communicative abilities in AD. However, conside ring the neuropathology in limbic areas in this disorder, a decline in pain affect may also explain this phenomenon. In the present study, a newly dev eloped questionnaire was applied to 20 elderly persons without dementia, 20 patients in an early stage and 20 patients in a midstage of AD. The questi onnaire includes 10 pairs of painful situations, each pair consisting of an acute and a chronic affective painful situation, It was hypothesized that, compared to controls, AD patients during the course of the disease would r eport to suffer increasingly more from an acute than from a chronic, affect ive painful situation, The results support our hypothesis. Limitations of t he present study are discussed.