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Published on: June 2, 2014

Do Pain Scores Correlate With Vital Signs in Pediatric Patients With Migraine Headaches?

Michael Dabrowski1, Evan Greenhall1, Charlotte Bolch2

  • 1Phoenix Children's Hospital, Phoenix, Arizona.

Hospital Pediatrics
|June 15, 2026
PubMed

Insights

Vital signs do not reliably indicate pain in children with migraine. This study found no correlation between pain scores and heart rate or blood pressure, highlighting the need for better pain assessment methods.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Pain Management
  • Clinical Assessment
  • Neurology

Background:

  • Assessing pain in children is difficult, with clinicians often using vital signs (VS) as indirect pain measures.
  • While acute pain typically alters VS, chronic pain conditions like migraine may not consistently elicit these autonomic responses.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the association between self-reported pain scores and concurrent vital signs (heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure) in pediatric migraine patients.
  • To test the hypothesis that pain intensity does not significantly correlate with these vital signs in this population.

Main Methods:

  • A retrospective cohort study included 777 children (aged 7-18) hospitalized with migraine.
  • Self-reported pain scores were analyzed alongside heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure recorded within one hour.
  • Analyses were conducted on the overall cohort and stratified by age groups (7-11 and 12-18 years).

Main Results:

  • No significant associations were found between self-reported pain scores and heart rate, systolic blood pressure, or diastolic blood pressure in the overall cohort.
  • These findings remained consistent across the different age strata.
  • The study included 777 pediatric patients with migraine, after exclusions for miscoded diagnoses or missing vital sign data.

Conclusions:

  • Vital sign measurements are unreliable indicators of self-reported pain severity in children hospitalized for migraine.
  • These results emphasize the necessity of employing multimodal, patient-centered strategies for accurate pain assessment in pediatric migraine.
  • Clinicians should not solely rely on vital signs for evaluating pain intensity in pediatric migraine patients.
Abstract

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