Experimental Pain Model Based on Short‐Wave Diathermy Replicates the Intensity, Quality and Spatial Distribution of Chronic Shoulder Pain: A Parallel Group Validation Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Several experimental pain models have been developed to better understand shoulder pain. However, most of these models do not accurately replicate characteristic features of clinical pain. The aim of this study was to assess whether the effects of the short-wave diathermy (SWD) pain model mimic clinical shoulder pain in terms of intensity, quality, and spatial distribution. METHODS: Thirty-two patients with unilateral shoulder pain (USP) and thirty-two healthy volunteers participated in a single experimental session. SWD was applied to the dominant shoulder of healthy volunteers, until volunteers reached the tolerance threshold for painful heat stimulation. Pressure pain thresholds (PPTs), pain intensity (using a visual analogue scale, VAS), pain quality (using the McGill Pain Questionnaire) and spatial pain distribution were assessed 30 min after SWD application on the infraspinatus muscle. The same assessments were performed in the USP group. Outcomes were contrasted using linear mixed models and independent sample t tests, and statistical equivalence was assessed using the TOST (two one-sided t tests) procedure. RESULTS: PPTs on the painful side were statistically equivalent within a range of ±50 kPa. Pain intensities in both groups were statistically equivalent within a range of ±2 VAS points. Both groups showed a similar spatial pain distribution, and described the pain as continuous, well-delimited, dull and bearable. However, USP patients more frequently used the stabbing and nagging descriptors in contrast to volunteers in the SWD group, who chose hot and heavy instead. CONCLUSION: Experimental pain induced by SWD accurately reproduces many relevant characteristics of chronic shoulder pain. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Short-wave diathermy applied to the shoulder of healthy volunteers elicited equivalent pain intensity, quality and spatial distribution compared with clinical unilateral shoulder pain.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".