1. What data in particular will be shared?
   Response - Individual participant data that underlie the results reported in this article, after de-identification (text, tables, figures, and appendices).
   


2. What additional supporting information will be shared?
   Response -  Study Protocol
   Response -  Statistical Analysis Plan
   
   
3. Who will be able to view these files?
   Response - Researchers whose proposed use of the data has been approved by an independent review committee identified for this purpose.
   


4. For what types of analyses will this data be available?
   Response - For individual participant data meta-analysis.
   


5. By what mechanism will data be made available?
   Response - Proposals should be directed to [ravindrancharulatha@gmail.com].
   


6. For how long will this data be available start date provided 01-12-2024 and end date provided 30-11-2027?
   Response - Beginning 9 months and ending 36 months following article publication.
   


7. Any URL or additional information regarding plan/policy for sharing IPD? 
   Additional Information - NIL

Effective management of acute postoperative pain is essential for functional recovery of the patient, for ensuring early mobility, and safe hospital discharge. Assessment of acute postoperative pain is the first step in the management and subsequent choice of analgesic therapy. The commonly used tools for assessment of postoperative pain are unidimensional and assess only the pain intensity. These include the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), Verbal Rating Scale (VRS) and Faces Pain Scale (FPS). 

Despite their extensive use, the reliance on these unidimensional tools as the sole approach to measuring pain is currently insufficient. The tools are used to evaluate pain intensity and do not take functional recovery of the patient into account.¹Striving[CR1]  to lower pain intensity scores to zero has resulted in increased opioid analgesic use in the post anesthesia care unit.^2,3 Treating pain only by its intensity needs to be abandoned as it has led to the current opioid epidemic in the United States.^2,4

The paradigm shift required in pain management is restoration of function by reducing pain scores to the extent that allows the patient to breathe, cough and ambulate; in this scenario, analgesic options will be governed by the intention to maximize functional capacity rather than striving to reduce the patient’s postoperative pain to below a specified numerical value.⁵

Pain is the cognitive component of nociception and there are various determinants of pain perception apart from the intensity of the nociceptive stimulus. Anxiety, depression, mood stability of the patient, anticipation of pain, cognition of the rating scales are few of the factors which influence perception and reporting of pain scales.⁶ Hence, patients have difficulties in reporting the complex experience of pain by a single numerical value, or as a mark on a line.⁷ Assessment of pain only by unidimensional rating scales does not consider the influence of the above-mentioned components. 

Efforts have been made to encourage use of multidimensional tools to assess postoperative pain. The Brief Pain Inventory, the Revised American Pain Society Pain Outcomes Questionnaire and the McGill Pain Questionnaire are the commonly used tools, but these tools involve a detailed assessment, hindering frequent assessment in the postoperative and surgical wards.⁸ The Functional Activity Score which incorporates functional activity into the scoring system has not been formally validated.