Applicability of tools to assess pain in elderly patients after cardiac surgery

Background: Post‐operatively, elderly patients with impaired vision and cognitive dysfunction may experience difficulties understanding standard pain assessment tools such as the 10‐cm Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and the Verbal Rating Scale (VRS). Thus, there is a need to identify more feasible post‐operative pain assessments for elderly patients. With this goal in mind, we compared the VAS and VRS with two more expressive tools: the 50‐cm Red Wedge Scale (RWS) and the Facial Pain Scale (FPS). Methods: Cardiac surgery patients (73 ± 5 years, mean ± SD) were allocated to an RWS (n=80) or an FPS (n=80) group. Pain was assessed at rest and after movement during the first 4 days after tracheal extubation. The RWS or FPS assessments were repeated after 10 min. All patients completed the VRS and VAS. Results: The rates of successful pain measurement on study day 1 were: VRS 86%, VAS 62%, RWS 78%, and FPS 60%. Pain measurements with the RWS correlated with the VAS (r=0.758, P