The Brief Pain Inventory
The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) rapidly assesses the severity of pain and its impact on functioning. The BPI has been translated into dozens of languages, and it is widely used in both research and clinical settings.
The BPI is available in two formats: the BPI short form, which is used for clinical trials and is the version used for the foreign-language translations; and the BPI long form, which contains additional descriptive items that may be clinically useful (for example, items that expand the possible descriptors of pain, such as burning, tingling, etc.). For brevity¡¯s sake and for the patient¡¯s ease of use, we recommend the short form of the BPI.
| BPI Pain Items | BPI Interference Items |
|---|---|
| Worst pain in last 24 hours | General activity |
| Least pain in last 24 hours | Mood |
| Pain on average | Walking ability |
| Pain right now | Normal work (including housework) |
| Relations with other people | |
| Sleep | |
| Enjoyment of life |
Order the BPI
BPI Features
- Purpose: To assess the severity of pain and the impact of pain on daily functions
- Population: Patients with pain from chronic diseases or conditions such as cancer, osteoarthritis and low back pain, or with pain from acute conditions such as postoperative pain
- Assessment areas: Severity of pain, impact of pain on daily function, location of pain, pain medications and amount of pain relief in the past 24 hours or the past week
- Responsiveness: Responds to both behavioral and pharmacological pain interventions
- Method: Self-report or interview with research staff; paper-and-pencil or electronic data entry
- Time required: Five minutes (short form), 10 minutes (long form)
- Scoring: No scoring algorithm, but "worst pain" or the arithmetic mean of the four severity items can be used as measures of pain severity; the arithmetic mean of the seven interference items can be used as a measure of pain interference
- Reliability: Cronbach alpha reliability ranges from 0.77 to 0.91
BPI Language Versions
Click on a linked language to view a sample in PDF format.
Don't see a language you need? Contact us at symptomresearch@mdanderson.org.
| Psychometrically and Linguistically Validated | Linguistically Validated |
|---|---|
| Amharic |
Afrikaans |
| Arabicc | Bahasa Indonesia (in process) |
| Cebuano | Bengali |
| Chinese (Simplified)c | Bulgarian |
| Chinese (Traditional)c | Danishc |
| Croatian | Dutchc |
| Czechc | Estonianc |
| Englisha,b,c | Finnishc |
| Farsi | Georgian |
| Filipino | Gujarati |
| Frenchc | Hiligaynon |
| Germanc | Hungarian |
| Greek | Icelandic |
| Hebrewc | Ilocano |
| Hindi | Indonesian |
| Italiana,c | Kannada |
| Japanesec | Latvian |
| Koreanc | Lithuanian |
| Malay | Luganda |
| Norwegianc | Malayalam |
| Russianc | Marathi |
| Sinhala | N. Sotho |
| Slovak | Nepali (in process) |
| Slovenian | Oriya |
| Spanisha,b | Polishc |
| Thai | Portuguese (Brazil)c |
| Portuguese (Portugal) |
|
| Punjabi | |
| Romanian | |
| Runyankole |
|
| Serbian | |
| Sesotho | |
| Sotho | |
| Swahili | |
| Swedishc | |
| Tamil | |
| Telugu | |
| Turkishc | |
| Ukranian | |
| Urdu | |
| Vietnamese | |
| Welsh | |
| Xhosa | |
| Zulu |
a A linguistically validated version of the BPI BPI Long Form is available in this language.
b The BPI for Diabetes is available in this language. Only the English version has been psychometrically validated.
c The BPI for Herpes Zoster is available in this language. Only the English version has been psychometrically validated.
BPI User's Guide
In response to the for the pharmaceutical industry on the use of patient-reported outcome measures in medical product development to support labeling claims, we have prepared a BPI User's Guide to document the BPI's development and psychometric properties.
The information offered therein addresses the recommendations in the FDA guidance and establishes the BPI's adequacy as a measure to support medical product claims.
Selected BPI References
Validation
Cleeland CS, Ryan KM. Ann Acad Med Singapore 23(2): 129-138, 1994.
Cleeland CS. Measurement of pain by subjective report. In: Chapman CR, Loeser JD, editors. Advances in Pain Research and Therapy, Volume 12: Issues in Pain Measurement. New York: Raven Press; 1989. pp. 391-403.
Atkinson TM, Rosenfeld BD, Sit L, et al. J Pain Symptom Manage 41(3): 558-565, 2011.
Ferreira KA, Teixeira MJ, Mendoza TR, Cleeland CS. Support Care Cancer 19(4): 505-511, 2011.
Kalyadina SA, Ionova TI, Ivanova MO, Uspenskaya OS, Kishtovich AV, Mendoza TR, Guo H, Novik A, Cleeland CS, Wang XS. J Pain Symptom Manage 35(1): 95-102, 2008.
Mendoza TR, Mayne T, Rublee D, Cleeland CS. Eur J Pain10(4): 353-361, 2006.
Zelman DC, Gore M, Dukes E, Tai KS, Brandenburg N. . J Pain Symptom Manage 29(4): 401-410, 2005.
Coplan PM, Schmader K, Nikas A, et al. . J Pain 5(6): 344-356, 2004.
Mendoza TR, Chen C, Brugger A, et al. Clin J Pain 20(5): 357-362, 2004.
Keller S, Bann CM, Dodd SL, Schein J, Mendoza TR, Cleeland CS. Clin J Pain 20(5): 309-318, 2004.
Yun YH, Mendoza TR, Heo DS, Yoo T, Heo BY, Park HA, Shin HC, Wang XS, Cleeland CS. Oncology 66(6): 439-444, 2004.
Badia X, Muriel C, Gracia A, et al. Med Clin (Barc) 120 (2): 52-59, 2003.
Klepstad P, Loge JH, Borchgrevink PC, Mendoza TR, Cleeland CS, Kaasa S. J Pain Symptom Manage 24(5): 517-525, 2002.
Laudico AV, Mendoza TR, Siguan SS, Cleeland CS. Measuring cancer pain intensity and its effect on daily functioning: validation of the Cebuano version of the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI-Ce). Philipp J Surg Spec 57(3): 94-99, 2002.
Mystakidou K, Mendoza T, Tsilika E, et al. Oncology 60(1): 35-42, 2001.
Ger LP, Ho ST, Sun WZ, Wang MS, Cleeland CS. J Pain Symptom Manage 18(5): 316-322, 1999.
Radbruch L, Loick G, Kiencke P, et al. J Pain Symptom Manage 18(3): 180-187, 1999.
Saxena A, Mendoza T, Cleeland CS. J Pain Symptom Manage 17(1): 27-41, 1999.
Uki J, Mendoza T, Cleeland CS, Nakamura Y, Takeda F. J Pain Symptom Manage 16(6): 364-373, 1998.
Caraceni A, Mendoza TR, Mencaglia E, et al. Pain 65(1): 87-92, 1996.
Wang XS, Mendoza TR, Gao SZ, Cleeland CS. . Pain 67(2-3): 407-416, 1996.
Larue F, Carlier AM, Brasseur L, Colleau SM, Cleeland CS. Assessing the prevalence and severity of cancer pain in France: The French Brief Pain Inventory [abstract]. American Pain Society 10th Annual Scientific Meeting, New Orleans LA, Nov 7-10, 1991.
Clinical Application
Nalamachu S, Wieman M, Bednarek L, Chitra S. . Patient Prefer Adherence 7:551-557, 2013.
Wang XS, Rhines LD, Shiu AS, et al. Lancet Oncol 13(4): 395-402, 2012.
Mendoza TR, Koyyalagunta D, Burton AW, et al. . J Pain 13(6): 564-570, 2012.
Vadhan-Raj S, von Moos R, Fallowfield LJ, et al. Ann Oncol 23(12) 3045-3051, 2012.
Shi Q, Wang XS, Mendoza TR, Pandya KJ, Cleeland CS. J Pain Symptom Manage 37(2): 168-174, 2009.
Atkinson TM, Mendoza TR, Sit L, Passik S, Scher HI, Cleeland C, Basch E. Pain Med 11: 337-346, 2010.
Dworkin RH, Turk DC, Wyrwich KW, et al. J Pain 9(2): 105-121, 2008.
Cleeland CS. Clin Cancer Res 12(20 Part 2): 6236s-6242s, 2006.
Cleeland CS, Nakamura Y, Mendoza TR, Edwards KR, Douglas J, Serlin RC. Pain 67: 267-273, 1996.
Serlin RC, Mendoza TR, Nakamura Y, Edwards KR, Cleeland CS. Pain 1995;61:277-284.
BPI Versions
The BPI?comes in a short form and a long form. The short form has been validated for use with several non-cancer conditions.?
The BPI is a powerful tool that has been adopted worldwide for clinical pain assessment, epidemiological studies, and studies of the effectiveness of pain treatment.
Charles S. Cleeland, Ph.D.
Professor, Symptom Research