Validation of an Arabic version of the brief pain inventory in Libyan patients with chronic pain

Abstract

Chronic pain is prevalent complain and its proper management requires accurate assessment by using comprehensive, culturally sensitive, reliable, valid standard pain measuring instrument. Such Pain metric have not been validated in Libyan patients so that, the purpose of this study was to validate the psychometric properties of the Brief Pain Inventory Arabic version BPI-AV in Libyan patients with chronic pain. After translation to Arabic and testing of cultural sensitivity, we administered the BPI-AV and visual analogue scale of pain VAS to 120 patients with chronic pain. Factor analysis was used to evaluate factor structure, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients values were used to assess reliability. The BPI and its pain severity subscale were validated against VAS. In total,115(96%)patients were eligible for the study. A factor analysis revealed a structure of three factors; pain intensity, interference with physical function, and interference with psychological functions. These three factors explained 72% of the variance. Cronbach`s α coefficients were 0.86 for the severity items, 0.74 for the psychological interference items ,0.84 for the physical interference items and 0.85 for BPI as a whole. The correlations between ratings on VAS of pain and each of the total BPI scores, pain severity index and pain severity item asking about pain right now were 0.71,086, 0.71 respectively (p < 0.01). We conclude that BPI has satisfactory psychometric properties and it could be valid tool for measuring pain in Libyan patients.