gms | German Medical Science

14th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (IFSSH), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT)

17.06. - 21.06.2019, Berlin

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The impact of illness perceptions, psychological distress and pain catastrophizing on self-reported symptom severity and functional status in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome

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  • presenting/speaker Pepijn Sun - Radboudumc, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  • Ruud Selles - Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands
  • Harm Slijper - Xpert Clinic, Hilversum, Netherlands
  • Erik Walbeehm - Radboudumc, Nijmegen, Netherlands

International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand. International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy. 14th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (IFSSH), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT). Berlin, 17.-21.06.2019. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2020. DocIFSSH19-827

doi: 10.3205/19ifssh0803, urn:nbn:de:0183-19ifssh08038

Published: February 6, 2020

© 2020 Sun et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Outline

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Objectives/Interrogation: Previous studies have demonstrated the influence of illness perceptions on patient outcomes. Although several psychological factors have shown to be associated with self-reported severity in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS), illness perceptions have not yet been studied. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the relation between self-reported symptom severity and functional status and psychological distress, pain catastrophizing and illness perceptions.

Methods: All patients with CTS who were scheduled for surgery in 1 of our 16 specialized hand clinics between September 2017 and August 2018 were asked to fill out online questionnaires regarding demographic data, comorbidities, psychological factors and clinical severity measures. A total of 674 CTS patients completed all questionnaires and were included. Our outcome measures were the functional status scale (FSS) and symptom severity scale (SSS) of the Boston Carpal tunnel Questionnaire (BCTQ). Psychological distress was measured with the Patient Health Questionnaire, pain catastrophizing with the Pain Catastrophizing Scale and illness perceptions with the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated and hierarchical linear regression models were used to examine the relation between self-reported severity and psychological factors, when accounting for baseline characteristics and comorbidities.

Results and Conclusions: Psychological distress, pain catastrophizing and illness perceptions were significantly correlated with the FSS and SSS scores (correlation coefficients ranged from 0.21 to 0.46). Hierarchical linear regression models showed that variance in FSS score was explained for 15% by patient characteristics and comorbidities, 11% by psychological distress and pain catastrophizing, and 9% by illness perceptions. For the SSS score 8%, 12% and 13% was explained by these same sets of variables.

This study showed that psychological distress, pain catastrophizing and illness perceptions all play an independent role in self-reported severity of CTS complaints. The relation between these factors and self-reported symptom severity and functional status is important, as these factors together explain about a quarter of the variance in BCTQ scores. Future studies should indicate if and how clinicians should take this into account when they are consulted by patients with CTS.