Method: Participants consisted of 82 African Americans and 88 Caucasians between the ages of 45-85 years-old with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis. Eligible participants completed the Pain Vigilance and Awareness Questionnaire (PVAQ) before completing a series of 60 second hand immersions using the cold pressor task. Cluster analysis was used to create a high pain hypervigilance group (HPHG) and a low pain hypervigilance group (LPHG). Chi-Squared tests and a series of ANOVAs (controlling for pain tolerance) were completed to assess differences between HPHG and LPHG in ratings of cold pain severity at 16, 12, and 8oC.
Result: HPHG: N=76 X=58.8, LPHG: N=94 X=32.46. At 16oC, 9% of the HPHG terminated the procedure prior to the full 60 second exposure compared to 2% of the LPHG (p=0.04); mean pain severity rating for the HPHG was 38.52 compared to 26.01 for the LPHG (p=0.01). At 12oC, 43% of the HPHG compared to 16% of the LPHG terminated the procedure early (p<0.001); mean pain severity rating for the HPHG was 69.70 compared to 50.41 in the LPHG (p<0.01). At 8oC, 63% of the HPHG compared to 30% of the LPHG terminated the procedure early (p<0.001); mean pain severity rating for the HPHG was 81.30 compared to 66.81 in the LPHG (p<0.05).
Conclusion: Although the study is ongoing, thus far it appears that patients with high pain hypervigilance are less likely to tolerate pain compared to patients with low pain hypervigilance. Controlling for tolerance, patients with high pain hypervigilance also reported greater pain severity than patients with low pain hypervigilance. The differences in tolerance and pain severities reported by patients with high and low pain hypervigilance became more pronounced as the stimulus’ intensity increased.