A survey of children's acute, recurrent, and chronic pain: validation of the Pain Experience Interview

The ultimate objective of our epidemiological research is to complete a lon gitudinal population-based study to document the prevalence and impact of a cute, recurrent, and chronic pain in children and adolescents. As the first phase of our epidemiological research, we developed a comprehensive screen ing instrument for identifying children with acute, recurrent, and chronic pain, the Pain Experience Interview. We designed this interview to provide information about the lifetime and point prevalence of various pains, and a lso to provide information about the intensity, affect, duration, and frequ ency of children's pain. The primary objective of this study was to validat e the Pain Experience Interview using the discriminant validation procedure of group differences. The secondary objectives of our study were to obtain descriptive data on children's acute, recurrent, and chronic pain experien ces and to conduct exploratory analyses on age- and gender-related differen ces in children's pain experiences. We interviewed 187 children from five d ifferent health groups (arthritis, cancer, enuresis, recurrent headaches, a nd healthy) to provide distinct subsets of children with respect to their a cute, recurrent, and chronic pain experience, and from four different age g roups (5-7, 8-10, 11-13, and 14-16 years) to provide distinct subgroups wit h respect to children's developmental level. To test the interview we deter mined a priori several study predictions about children's pain experiences. These included four predictions about the common response patterns that we would expect to observe for all children based on our understanding of acu te pain caused by trauma/ disease, and six predictions about the distinct r esponse patterns that we would expect tl, observe based on the known differ ences among children in their experiences of headache, acute treatment-rela ted pain, recurrent pain, and chronic pain. All study predictions were conf irmed, demonstrating that the Pain Experience Interview is a valid screenin g instrument for differentiating children with different types of pain prob lems. The interview can provide estimates for the lifetime and point preval ence of various pains in children, and data on the intensity, affect, durat ion, and frequency of their pain experiences. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevie r Science B.V. on behalf of the International Association for the Study of Pain.