“Convergent validity of the central sensitization inventory and experimental testing of pain sensitivity”, 2021, Holm et al

Abstract

Objectives
The aim of the current study was to examine the convergent validity of the Central Sensitization Inventory by quantifying the correlation with experimental measures of pain sensitivity and self-reported psycho-social questionnaires, in a low back pain population.

Methods
All participants were recruited from an outpatient hospital spine care clinic (Spine Centre of Southern Denmark). Participants underwent a standardized experimental pain test protocol and completed the Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI) along with additional self-reported questionnaires to assess psycho-social constructs across different domains. The association between the CSI, experimental pain measures and other self-reported psycho-social questionnaires were analyzed using correlation and contingency tests. ROC-curve analysis was used to determine sensitivity and specificity for CSI.

Results
One hundred sixty-eight (168) participants were included. The CSI was weakly correlated with nine out of 20 variables in the experimental pain test protocol (rho range −0.37 to 0.22). The CSI was more closely correlated with psycho-social factors such as work ability, disability, and symptoms of exhaustion disorder. ROC-analysis identified an optimal cut-point of 44 on CSI (Sn=39.1% Sp=87.4%). The CSI had an area under the ROC curve of 0.656. Fisher’s exact test demonstrated a statistically significant association between participants scoring ≥40 on CSI and participants categorized as sensitized by experimental pain tests (p-value=0.03).

Conclusions
Our findings are consistent with previous studies, indicating that the CSI is related to psycho-social constructs. However, the convergent validity with experimental pain measures is small and probably not clinically meaningful.

Paywall, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/sjpain-2021-0090/html

 

So it converges with questionnaire-answering-behaviour, but lacks construct validity. Is anyone surprised?

 

In what bizzaro universe are those psychosocial factors? Especially weird to include ability and disability, I guess because they wanted to list 3 things and couldn't come up with a third.

Ah. Of course. Label stuff "psychosocial" and you can pretend it is by pointing at the label you just put there, even as you're holding the label-printing machine. At this point it's fair to say that psychological medicine has simply stopped reviewing academic papers and simply publish whatever is in line with the dogma, regardless of substance.