New challenges of paediatric chronic pain in Spain: Multidisciplinary treatment

Background. In the last two decades, pediatric patients have been identified as particularly vulnerable to the acute and chronic consequences of pain, and valid tools have been developed for the measurement and treatment of chronic pain in children. However, we do not know to what extent Spanish children receive the indicated multidisciplinary treatment when suffering chronic pain. Material and methods. We review the results of a survey based on an electronic program through social networks provided by a specialized consultancy and developed by representatives of three scientific societies aimed at parents of children with persistent or recurrent pain lasting more than three months. Results. One hundred and fifty parents whose children met the inclusion criteria were included. Eighty percent of the participants suffered almost daily pain, but only 25% admitted moderate or severe pain intensity (score 5 or more on a scale of 0-10) with impairment of their quality of life. Some patients (18.7%) did not receive any treatment and of those who did, only about half received analgesic treatment. Only 8 of the 150 patients (5%) received multidisciplinary analgesic treatment. Conclusions. In Spain, we are currently far from offering optimal analgesic treatment to patients with pediatric chronic pain and, especially, very few patients receive multidisciplinary treatment (physiotherapy, psychotherapy and medical treatment). The new challenges that this situation produces are discussed: improvement of the training of the specialists involved, creation of pediatric pain units and use of new technologies.