Graphic presentation of visual analog scales for pain evaluation in rheumatology

: The scores of visual analog scales, used for rating of rheumatological pains, are scarcely normal distributed. The presentation of these findings by mean and standard deviation can be evidently distorted. Furthermore range and extreme values are missing. The new grafical method-box and whisker plot-is more adequate to those data. Comparing both methods in a clinical trial the possible gain of information is illustrated.