Pain sensitivity is increased across all severities of AD when measured using the FACS. Clinical observational pain scales support the relevance of facial expression as a partial compensatory pain communication modality for AD. However, measures of pain behavior that sum across objective coding of several domains provide a better indicator of subjective pain than measures of facial expression alone.

These findings provide behavioral and subjective-report evidence of increased acute pain sensitivity in AD, which should be taken into consideration with respect to pain management across the spectrum of AD severity.

No abstract