Compliance was generally high , and positively associated with shorter diaries , age , having a user 's manual , financial compensation and using an alarm .
Electronic diaries are increasingly used to assess daily pain in many different forms and population s. This systematic review aims to survey the characteristics of studies using electronic pain diaries and to examine how these characteristics affect compliance .
Pain Assessment in Patients With Fibromyalgia Syndrome: A Consideration of Methods for Clinical Trials
Objective : This study was design ed to compare 3 commonly used method ologies for assessing clinical pain during trials involving patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome . Baseline characteristics , characteristics over time , and compliance were evaluated for each of the methods . Methods : Fourteen patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome were asked to monitor their symptoms of pain using 3 different strategies over a 12-week period : 1 ) real-time pain reports were collected on an electronic diary using r and omly-scheduled audible prompts ; 2 ) end-of-week reports asked patients to rate their mean pain over the past week on the electronic diary ; and 3 ) monthly in-clinic reports asked patients to rate their mean pain for the week using a traditional paper and pencil diary . Results : Significantly different baseline values were obtained for the 3 methods . Paper and pencil produced the highest values , and real-time pain reports produced the lowest baseline values . Pain ratings were more likely to reflect decreases in the 2 methods relying on recall than the real-time strategy . The average adherence with pain monitoring using the electronic diary was 85 % , which was superior to the adherence for the recall measures completed during the clinic visits . Conclusion : Pain assessment methods relying on recall might contribute to an apparent improvement in clinical trials in the absence of an intervention ; such an effect has been considered a “ placebo response . ” Future clinical trials might consider using a real-time approach to pain assessment  , which in this study appeared to mitigate against seeing improvement in the absence of an intervention and demonstrated higher levels of patient adherence
Compliance was generally high , and positively associated with shorter diaries , age , having a user 's manual , financial compensation and using an alarm .
Electronic diaries are increasingly used to assess daily pain in many different forms and population s. This systematic review aims to survey the characteristics of studies using electronic pain diaries and to examine how these characteristics affect compliance .