Factors Associated With Postsurgical Pain in Children and Adolescents With Cognitive Dysfunction.
Débora Sierra-Núñez, Alejandro Bosch-Alcaraz, Sandra Parada-Almansa and 6 others
PMID 42116652WHAT IT FOUND
In children with cognitive dysfunction who could not verbally report pain, 12.1% of assessments showed moderate to severe pain, with higher scores in girls after analgesia and in autism or neurodegenerative disease before analgesia.
Key findings
01Moderate to severe pain was present in 12.1% of assessments (n = 130), with mean scores 4.6 before and 0.7 after analgesia.
02Before analgesia, mean pain was 7.7 points with neurodegenerative disease and 6.1 points with autism spectrum disorder among assessments with moderate to severe pain.
03After analgesia, mean pain was 1.2 points in girls and 0.5 points in boys.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The sample was small and selected consecutively from one Spanish hospital, so the findings may not generalise. Some categories, such as neurodegenerative disease and autism spectrum disorder, had few patients, so those associations need cautious interpretation. Eight patients were excluded from medication analysis because records were incomplete. The study is observational, so it cannot show that sex, diagnosis, nationality, or surgery type caused higher pain. The sex difference after analgesia was not the main objective and needs larger studies.
Declared interests
Funded by the Nursing and Society Foundation of the Official College of Nurses of Barcelona (PR-536/2022). Authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that these patient groups need stronger analgesia because of this study alone. It is a single centre observational study with repeated assessments and small numbers in some categories, so the associations may not apply to your patients.