Visual Analog Scale (VAS)

The Visual Analog Scale (VAS) is a simple, validated tool to measure pain intensity. Patients mark their pain level on a 10-centimeter line ranging from “no pain” to “worst imaginable pain.”

This provides a quantifiable measure of a highly subjective experience.
The VAS is widely used in both clinical practice and research because it allows pain changes to be tracked over time and compared across therapies. Alongside the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS), it is one of the most common outcome measures in pain medicine, making it essential for evaluating treatment efficacy in both research studies and day-to-day practice.