Follow Us On
Contact Us
info@ampainsoc.org847.375.4715
American Pain Society
4700 W Lake Ave
Glenview, IL 60025
John D. Loeser, MD, Department Editor
Reviewed by Judith A. Turner, PhD
D.C. Turk & R. Melzack (eds.), Guilford Press, New York, 2001, 760 pages, $75 (soft cover), ISBN 1-57230-488-X
The second edition of the Handbook of Pain Assessment is divided into an introduction and six parts: measurement of pain, assessment of the behavioral expression of pain, medical and physical evaluation of patients with pain, psychological evaluation of patients with pain, specific pain states and syndromes, methodological issues, and a conclusion. The chapters cover a broad range of topics, making this an extremely comprehensive text on the subject. The list of authors reads like a “who’s who” of experts in their fields. The individual chapters are well written, thorough, and an excellent source of information.
This volume will undoubtedly prove extremely useful to researchers in decision making concerning instruments to use for the assessment of pain and related variables (e.g., physical and psychological functioning, pain beliefs, and coping strategies) for particular purposes or with specific populations. Research to date on numerous widely used measures is synthesized, saving investigators the chore of extensive literature searching and retrieval. Many actual measures are included—a feature useful in deciding whether to use a particular measure and in saving the time and effort involved in obtaining a measure or identifying the “official” current version.
The Handbook of Pain Assessment also will be useful for clinicians of different specialties that wish to learn more about the assessment of patients with pain. For example, there are chapters devoted to the assessment of pain in special populations (including children, the elderly, and persons with limited ability to communicate), assessment of specific pain syndromes (including, but not limited to, low back pain, headache, and orofacial pain), diagnostic injections, disability evaluation, and psychiatric/psychological evaluation.
Strengths in addition to the superb content are an attractive layout; useful tables, figures, and other illustrations; cross-references to other chapters that cover a specific topic; and author and subject indexes. All in all, this is an excellent book.
Judith Turner is Hughes M. and Katherine G. Blake Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
