1 Before you use it
What it is
A screening questionnaire for a neuropathic component, built and validated originally in low back pain.
Covers the pain course pattern, radiation, and seven descriptor items — burning, tingling, light-touch sensitivity, electric shocks, cold or heat sensitivity, numbness, and pressure pain.
When to reach for it
Any radiating limb pain, any suspected nerve involvement, any presentation where the descriptors sound wrong for the tissue.
Radicular pain, entrapments, post-fracture pain that isn't behaving, and CRPS screening all sit here.
Patterns it serves · 8
2 Giving it
Scoring
Nine items scored to a total of −1 to 38, with graded categories for unlikely, ambiguous and likely neuropathic component.
Patient-completed, so it can go home with them.
What it doesn’t measure
It doesn't localise the lesion or replace a neurological examination. Power, reflexes and sensation, recorded bilaterally, still have to happen.
And a positive screen isn't a diagnosis of neuropathic pain — it's a reason to examine more carefully and to reconsider the plan.
Repeat it
3 Reading the score
Interpreting it
**Cut-points around 12 and 19 are commonly cited for the three bands.
It is a screen, not a diagnosis — and the descriptors it flags are the ones that change your management: burning, electric, numb and touch-sensitive pain does not respond to the same loading logic as nociceptive pain.
Is the change real?
On placement
Lumbar radicular pain. painDETECT 21 at intake — in the conventional 'likely neuropathic' band — and 16 at the 6-week review.
Read it as 5 points down, past the 4.0-point MCID for neuropathic pain (2.5 for nociceptive), but that figure comes from a total knee arthroplasty cohort — state the transfer. The score has crossed from 'likely' into the 'ambiguous' band, and the bands themselves are conventions, not verified cut-points in this library.
Do it is a screen, not a diagnosis. Read which descriptors dropped — burning, electric, touch-sensitivity — because those are what change the loading logic.
Student trap. Using it instead of a neuro exam rather than alongside one. A questionnaire cannot record a reflex.
Licensed through coas.iqvia.com. We don't host the form.
Use instead: DN4 — same construct, no licence.
This is a learning tool. It does not diagnose patients and does not replace your clinical educator.
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CliniStudy is in beta. One tap is enough — it decides what gets fixed first.