Engineering Commons^™

Can Subjective Pain Be Inferred From Objective Physiological Data? Evidence From Patients With Sickle Cell Disease, Mark J. Panaggio, Daniel M. Abrams, Fan Yang, Tanvi Banerjee, Nirmish R. Shah

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) experience lifelong struggles with both chronic and acute pain, often requiring medical interventMaion. Pain can be managed with medications, but dosages must balance the goal of pain mitigation against the risks of tolerance, addiction and other adverse effects. Setting appropriate dosages requires knowledge of a patient's subjective pain, but collecting pain reports from patients can be difficult for clinicians and disruptive for patients, and is only possible when patients are awake and communicative. Here we investigate methods for estimating SCD patients' pain levels indirectly using vital signs that are routinely collected and documented in …