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Author Spotlight: Quantifying Pain Experience – An Illustrative Approach Using the Pain Body Diagram
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Author Spotlight: Quantifying Pain Experience – An Illustrative Approach Using the Pain Body Diagram

Published on: July 7, 2023

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Pain Widespreadedness, and Not Primary Pain Location, is Associated With Comorbid Symptoms in Children With Chronic

Emily Foxen-Craft1,2, Elizaveta Bourchtein1,2, Chelsea Kaplan2

  • 1Department of Pediatrics.

The Clinical Journal of Pain
|December 16, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Widespread pain in children is more informative than primary pain location for understanding pain-related symptoms. This finding helps advance precise treatment for pediatric chronic pain.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Pain Management
  • Clinical Psychology
  • Rheumatology

Background:

  • Pediatric chronic pain is complex and heterogeneous.
  • Traditionally, pain is classified by primary location, but widespread pain is increasingly recognized.
  • A direct comparison between these classification methods is lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To compare the informativeness of primary pain location versus pain widespreadedness in pediatric chronic pain.
  • To identify which categorization method better predicts pain-related outcomes.

Main Methods:

  • 223 youth (8-23 years) with chronic pain completed intake surveys.
  • Primary pain locations were categorized (headache, abdominal, musculoskeletal).
  • Widespread pain and other outcomes (pain interference, kinesiophobia, catastrophizing, anxiety, depression, sleep, fatigue) were assessed.

Main Results:

  • Primary pain location was only associated with kinesiophobia.
  • Pain widespreadedness was significantly associated with pain interference, catastrophizing, fatigue, anxiety, and depression, after controlling for covariates.
  • Widespread pain demonstrated a more consistent association with multiple pain-related outcomes.

Conclusions:

  • Pain widespreadedness is a more informative metric than primary pain location for pediatric chronic pain.
  • Utilizing body maps to assess widespread pain may help identify nociplastic pain mechanisms.
  • Improved assessment of pain mechanisms can lead to more precise treatment strategies for pediatric chronic pain.
Abstract

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