Pain characteristics and imagery ability in patients with familial Mediterranean fever

Assessing imagery ability could be important for clinicians to understand or speculate on the limit of a patient’s physical ability in chronic pain conditions. We aimed to assess imagery ability that is potentially affected in patients with Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF). In addition, pain characteristics and associational factors between pain and imagery abilities were examined. Patients with FMF group (n=30) and control group (n=30) were included into the study. Movement Imagery Questionnaire-3 (MIQ-3) was questioned in both groups to assess imagery ability. McGill Pain Questionnaire Form (MPQ) and Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) were used to assess pain. There was a statistically significant difference in all sub-scores of the MIQ-3 imagery levels between FMF and the control group (p<0.05). Mean value for PCS was 23.27 ± 12.52 in which 13 (43.3 %) of the patients had higher scores than 30 indicating catastrophic thoughts. It was determined that the imagery scores of the patients with FMF were lower than the control group. Patients who had catastrophic thoughts showed more scores in IVI scores indicating that the attention processes of these patients to their bodies might be affected. Further large-scale, long-term, prospective, randomized-controlled studies are needed to confirm these findings.