Pain assessment in critically ill adult patients
Abstract
Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with damage. It is a multifactorial and subjective phenomenon with an incidence of up to 60 % in critically ill patients, which may lead to negative consequences at cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, muscular, hematological, and psychological levels.
The gold standard for pain assessment is the patient's report, who can indicate the presence of pain by answering the simple question «Do you have pain?» or express its intensity using the numeric pain rating scale (NRS). Patients who can communicate may also provide information regarding other characteristics of pain. In patients unable to communicate but capable of responding to stimuli, it is appropriate to use behavioral scales, which are based on observing the presence of behaviors associated with pain.
The objective of this step-by-step study is to describe the pain assessment in critically ill adult patients.
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