%0 Journal Article
%T Optimizing Temporal Summation of Heat Pain Using a Constant Contact Heat Stimulator.
%A Kell PA
%A Vore CN
%A Hahn BJ
%A Payne MF
%A Rhudy JL
%J J Pain Res
%V 17
%N 0
%D 2024
%M 38347852
%F 2.832
%R 10.2147/JPR.S439862
%X <B>UNASSIGNED: </B>Temporal summation (TS) of pain occurs when pain increases over repeated presentations of identical noxious stimuli. TS paradigms can model central sensitization, a state of hyperexcitability in nociceptive pathways that promotes chronic pain onset and maintenance. Many experimenters use painful heat stimuli to measure TS (TS-heat); yet, TS-heat research faces unresolved challenges, including difficulty evoking summation in up to 30-50% of participants. Moreover, substantial variability exists between laboratories regarding the methods for evoking and calculating TS-heat.<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>To address these limitations, this study sought to identify optimal parameters for evoking TS-heat in healthy participants with a commercially available constant contact heat stimulator, the Medoc TSA-II. Working within constraints of the TSA-II, stimulus trains with varying parameters (eg, stimulus frequency, baseline temp, peak temp, peak duration, testing site) were tested in a sample of 32 healthy, chronic pain-free participants to determine which combination best evoked TS-heat. To determine whether TS scoring method altered results, TS-heat was scored using three common methods.<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>Across all methods, only two trains successfully evoked group-level TS-heat. These trains shared the following parameters: site (palmar hand), baseline and peak temperatures (44°C and 50°C, respectively), and peak duration (0.5 s). Both produced summation that peaked at moderate pain (~50 out of 100 rating).<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>Future TS-heat investigations using constant contact thermodes and fixed protocols may benefit from adopting stimulus parameters that include testing on the palmar hand, using 44°C baseline and 50°C peak temperatures, at ≥0.33 Hz stimulus frequency, and peak pulse durations of at least 0.5 seconds.