Assessment of the Articles Related to Primary Dysmenorrhea in Dimension of Menstrual Pain Assessment Tools

Primary dysmenorrhea is of the most common complaints in women. Patient assessment and successful treatment needs to assess the patient's pain. According to high and different prevalence of primary dysmenorrhea in various studies and to know the most accepted tools of dysmenorrhea pain assessment and to discuss the advantage and disadvantage of these tools, this study was performed with aim to assess the articles related to dysmenorrhea in dimension of menstrual pain assessment tools.
This review article was performed with aim to assess the articles related to dysmenorrhea in dimension of menstrual pain assessment tools. Therefore, databases of Cochrane, Embase, Pubmed Medline, and Google Scholar were searched to find the related references with keywords of dysmenorrhea, scale, … between 2003 and 2013. The contents of the articles were exactly and repeatedly studied and were analyzed with focus on qualitative and quantitative aspects of pain assessment tools.
Totally, 259 articles were obtained. 248 articles used subjective tools of dysmenorrhea and 11 articles used objective tools. The most used subjective tools were VAS and Multi dimensional Verbal scale and most used objective tools of dysmenorrhea was evaluation of prostaglandins level. Totally, 28 different tools were used to assess dysmenorrhea pain. 9 tools were used in Persian articles. Moreover, 199 articles (78.6%) had simultaneously used one scale, 48 (18%) two scales, 10 (2.8 %) three and 2 (0.4 %) four scales.
Generally, various and different tools are available for menstrual pain assessment, but there is not a gold standard, but VAS and Verbal multidimensional scale are used more than other tools. It is necessary to select an appropriate tool according to the aim of researcher of the study, the study's cost, characteristics of study population and scale properties.