Development of a behavioral measure of mouth pain, nausea, and wellness for patients receiving radiation and chemotherapy.

Abstract

Toxicities from the chemotherapy and irradiation preparative regimen for bone marrow transplantation include nausea, emesis, and oral pain. Behavioral measures were developed as alternatives to paper and pencil measures of these symptoms because patients are sometimes too ill, unavailable, or unwilling to complete self-report scales. Behavioral observations also provide supplements to self-report for these multidimensional symptoms. For 24 days during the acute phase of transplantation, nurses rated the behavior of adult patients on: (a) oral pain (for example, requests pain medication or refuses mouth examination), (b) nausea (for instance, retches or keeps emesis basin near), (c) wellness (for example, talks voluntarily or smiles), (d) verbal complaints of pain, and (e) verbal complaints of nausea. The behavioral measures demonstrated good interday reliability (range, 0.70-0.86) and construct validity as demonstrated by a multitrait, multimethod correlation matrix.