Abstract
According to a recently released definition by the International Association for the Study of Pain, radiculopathy is classified as neuropathic pain (NeP). However, it may have different underlying pathophysiological mechanisms compared to other conventional NeP (cNeP) diseases, this is because non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs seem to be more effective for radiculopathy than for cNeP. Here we examined the differences between radiculopathy and cNeP by comparing pain characteristics that were described in the McGill pain questionnaire (MPQ). A total of 100 patients with radiculopathy and 362 with cNeP completed the MPQ, and its 20 elements of were then analyzed. Eleven elements were commonly extracted by the factor analysis from the two groups. Next, we found a discriminant function, which seemed to efficiently discriminate cNeP from radiculopathy. However, the canonical rate and discriminant rate were very low (0.31% and, 41%, respectively), and consequently the function failed to discriminate them significantly (p=0.99). The pain characteristics of cNeP and radiculopathy profoundly resembled each other, suggesting that their underlying mechanisms may also be common.
