This article clarifies important conceptual issues associated with the assessment of pain and considers reasons why pain should be considered in impairment and disability ratings. The authors address conceptual issues rather than specific pain assessment methods and limit the discussion to the musculoskeletal and neurologic injuries seen most frequently during impairment disability evaluations. Several groups of experts worked on the AMA Guides, and little is known about which elements of the AMA system are well substantiated and which need revision. In addition, the AMA Guides, as actually used, often differ from the guides as written. Self-reports that disability applicants provide about their experiences provide a first-person perspective that, in principle, may be important to assessors. Pain and “unbearable” sensations cannot be incorporated into impairment evaluations in the AMA Guides because pain is inherently subjective and because pain and its effects must be analyzed at the level of the whole person. In summary, although the AMA Guides, Fifth Edition, seems to support including pain in impairment ratings, this support is vitiated by inconsistencies in the conceptualization of impairment, contradictory information about how examiners should interpret pain, and inadequate guidance about how examiners should combine subjective and objective data.
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We relied on this conceptual ambiguity in the rationale we provided for assessing pain-related impairment in Chapter 18 of the Guides 5th. That is, we reasoned that since severity of impairment could be measured by the extent to which an individual's ability to perform ADLs was diminished, limitations associated with pain could be combined with limitations imposed by derangement of organs or body parts (i.e., by impairment in the usual sense) to determine the overall severity of the individual's impairment. On further reflection, however, we believe that the meaning of “impairment” should be circumscribed, so that it refers only to derangement of organs or body parts. Pain and other subjective experiences of individuals cannot be construed as contributors to impairment when this narrower construction of “impairment” is used.
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See Cocchiarella et. al. and Robinson et. al., supra note 4.
See Spieler et. al. and Rondinelli and Duncan, supra note 5
See Nagi, supra note 30.
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