Evaluation And Risk Assessment For Persistent Postsurgical Pain After Breast Surgery

Questionnaires including Pain catastrophizing scale (PCS), Central Sensitisation Inventory (CSI), Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Revised (CSQ-R), Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), EQ-5D-3L and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) will be administered to the patient.

A 180 gram von Frey filament is applied on the subject's forearm. Patient will then be asked to rate the pinprick pain score on a verbal rating scale, 0-100. Following this, 10 consecutive touches at random locations are applied with a 1 second interstimulus interval and within a 1 cm diameter circle. The patient will then be asked to rate the 10th pain score (0-100). The Mechanical Temporal Summation Score is obtained by the difference between the 11th pain score and the 1st pain score. If the score is greater than zero, the patient is implied to have presence of Mechanical Temporal Summation.

Pressure is applied 90 degree straight down force on the subject's right/left centre of the trapezius muscle using an algometer, with a speed of pressure \~ 1kgf/s. The above procedure is then repeated 3 times at each site (left/right) which is indicated on the pressure mark with each time having the reading recorded. When patient shows no response ≥ 6kgf, the threshold is recorded as 6kgf. The patient upon feeling pain will say stop or raise the hand to terminate the test. The mean value is obtained by averaging the readings and will then be recorded as the threshold estimate.