Pain Assessment and Management in Patients with Beta-Thalassemia Major: A Systematic Review

In recent years, pain has become a common and emergent complication in patients with β-thalassemia major. This systematic review investigates the assessment and management of pain in patients with β-thalassemia major. The Medline (via PubMed), Cochrane Library, and Web of Science databases were searched electronically in English up to September 2, 2023, using Mesh-based keywords. Two independent reviewers screened all titles and abstracts of articles using eligibility criteria and excluded repetitive, irrelevant, and qualitative articles. The review included cross-sectional studies, case-control studies, randomized trials, and systematic reviews on pain assessment or management in patients with β-thalassemia major. The quality of the studies was investigated using JBI checklists. 17 studies were included in this study. 12 studies assessed pain including the prevalence (6 studies), severity (4 studies), location (2 studies), related factors (7 studies), causes of pain (1 study), and interference with quality of life (6 studies). 5 studies investigated the use of pharmacological pain management. However; we could not find any studies examining non-pharmacological pain treatment for patients with β-thalassemia major. Further research is needed to comprehensively explore and expand our knowledge of how to properly assess and manage pain in these patients. This will enable us to establish a baseline health status and evaluate future improvements in care and health-related quality of life. The first limitation of this study is that it did not consider other databases. Additionally, the heterogeneity of the included studies, even when the bias assessment is considered.