Patent ID: 8549015

Claim:
A method of distinguishing nociceptive pain from neuropathic pain in a patient, comprising; (a) providing a plurality of questions wherein at least a first question and a second question of the plurality of questions are directed to aspects of pain experienced by the patient, wherein each of the first question and the second question have at least one corresponding answer; (b) obtaining at least one answer to the first question and at least one answer to the second question; (c) correlating at least two numerical values to each answer of the first question, and correlating at least two numerical values to each answer of the second question, a first numerical value of the two numerical values corresponding to a nociceptive pain category and a second numerical value of the two numerical values corresponding to a neuropathic pain category; (d) summing the numerical values within the nociceptive pain category to determine a raw nociceptive pain score, and summing the numerical values within the neuropathic pain category to determine a raw neuropathic pain score; (e) multiplying the raw nociceptive pain score by a first multiplier to determine a partial nociceptive pain score, and multiplying the raw neuropathic pain score by a second multiplier to determine a partial neuropathic pain score; (f) dividing the partial neuropathic pain score by the partial nociceptive pain score to determine a final ratio; and (g) comparing the final ratio with a standard for assessing whether the patient is suffering from nociceptive pain and/or neuropathic pain; wherein one or more of said providing, obtaining, correlating, summing, multiplying, and dividing steps are performed on a computation device.