What is the brief pain inventory (BPI)?

Cancers diagnosed or treated: All cancers that cause chronic or severe sporadic pain

Why performed: The BPI is administered to determine cancer patients’ level of pain. Once the level of pain is determined, oncologists work to manage the painful symptoms of cancer and to make patients more comfortable. Pain management is especially important for terminal patients.

Cancer pain appears when a tumor presses against organs, nerves, or bone. Treatments for cancer such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and especially surgery also can cause pain.

The Veterans Administration and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations consider pain the fifth vital sign and require physicians to ask patients about their pain.

Patient preparation: Taking the BPI requires no patient preparation.

Steps of the procedure: The questionnaire for the BPI is usually filled out by the patient. In some cases, a doctor, nurse, or social worker helps by interviewing the patient and recording the answers. Filling out the short version of the BPI takes about five minutes, while the long version takes about ten minutes.

After the procedure: After the patient completes the BPI, it is scored on a scale of 0–10 for both the severity and the impact dimensions of the pain.

Risks: There are no inherent risks involved with the BPI. Its validity has been tested many times, and it has been translated into twenty-five languages. The only possible problem involved with the BPI is a patient’s inability or reluctance to report pain accurately.

Results: The results of an individual patient’s BPI can be tabulated in a few minutes. The results help oncologists, nurses, and other caregivers develop a pain management plan for the cancer patient.

Bibliography

Atkinson, Thomas M., et al. "Measurement of Affective and Activity Pain Interference Using the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI): Cancer and Leukemia Group B 70903." Pain Medicine 13.11 (2012): 1417–24. Print.

Atkinson, Thomas M., et al. "Using Confirmatory Factor Analysis to Evaluate Construct Validity of the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI)." Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 41.3 (2011): 558–65. Print.

Nguyen, J. "Palliative Response and Functional Interference Outcomes Using the Brief Pain Inventory for Spinal Bony Metastases Treated with Conventional Radiotherapy." Clinical Oncology 23.7 (2011): 485–91. Print.

Pelayo-Alvarez, Marta, Santiago Perez-Hoyos, and Yolanda Agra-Varela. "Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the Palliative Outcome Scale, the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist, and the Brief Pain Inventory." Journal of Palliative Medicine 16.8 (2013): 867–74. Print.

Wong, Karrie, et al. "Minimal Clinically Important Differences in the Brief Pain Inventory in Patients with Bone Metastases." Supportive Care in Cancer 21.7 (2013): 1893–99. Print.