Emerging Tools to Capture Self-Reported Acute and Chronic Pain Outcome in Children and Adolescents: A Literature Review

Abstract

The advancement of digital health provides strategic and cost-effective opportunities for the progression of health care in children and adolescents. It is important for clinicians to be aware of the potential of emerging pain outcome measures and employ evidence-based tools capable of reliably tracking acute and chronic pain over time. The main emerging pain outcome measures for children and adolescents were examined. Overall, seven main texts and their corresponding digital health technologies were included in this study. The main findings indicated that the use of emerging digital health is able to reduce recall bias and can improve the real time paediatric data capture of acute and chronic symptoms. This literature review highlights new developments in pain management in children and adolescents and emphasizes the need for further research to be conducted on the use of emerging technologies in pain management. This may include larger scale, multicentre studies to further assess validity and reliability of these tools across various demographics. The privacy and security of mHealth data must also be carefully evaluated when choosing health applications that can be introduced into daily clinical settings.

Validation of an Electronic Visual Analog Scale App for Pain Evaluation in Children and Adolescents With Symptomatic Hypermobility: Cross-sectional Study

“…Advances in digital health have enabled emerging application of mHealth tools in pain management of children and adolescents by capturing real-time pain-related data, reducing recall bias, and improving responsiveness of health professionals [ 27 ]. The findings from a recent meta-analysis revealed a strong correlation between paper methods and electronic capture of pain-related outcomes with respect to completeness of patient-reported data collection, score equivalency, ease of use, and acceptability supporting their use in the clinical setting and in interventional research [ 1 ].…”

Smartphone Diary Application in Household Surveys: Integration of High Frequency Temporal Data in Large-scale Data Collection

“…In line with findings from other electronic diary studies, compliance rates were high and did not vary over the period of the study (Morren et al 2009). Previous studies using diaries for various domains, including medication adherence (Gordon et al 2007; Huber et al 2013), symptom management (Burton et al 2007; Jones et al 2019), diet and food intake (Brunner et al 2001; Given et al 2013), pain assessment (Stinson et al 2014; Turnbull et al 2022) and substance use (Acocella 2005; Stopka et al 2004) measured for shorter time periods of four–six weeks, and mostly under supervision. The results were mixed, with some reported high levels and others with moderate to lower levels of compliance, and with a gradual decline over time.…”

Application possibilities of digital tools in postoperative pain therapy

“…Die aktuelle Multicenterstudie AlgoDARPEF zeigte, dass eine App bei einer Nutzungsrate von 70 bis 90 % ein geeignetes Instrument zur Erfassung postoperativer Schmerzen bei Kindern im durchschnittlichen Alter von 6 Jahren ist [ 31 ]. Weiterhin hatten einfache Anwendungen zur Dokumentation, beispielsweise elektronische Schmerztagebücher, deutliche Vorteile in Form einer geringeren Erinnerungsverzerrung, einer Datenmessung in Echtzeit und einer geringeren Fehlerquote im Vergleich zu papierbasierten Schmerztagebüchern [ 30 ]. Allerdings fehlen auch für diese digitalen Dokumentationsanwendungen derzeit multizentrische RCT auf internationaler Ebene sowie eine breite klinische Umsetzung [ 30 ].…”

“…Weiterhin hatten einfache Anwendungen zur Dokumentation, beispielsweise elektronische Schmerztagebücher, deutliche Vorteile in Form einer geringeren Erinnerungsverzerrung, einer Datenmessung in Echtzeit und einer geringeren Fehlerquote im Vergleich zu papierbasierten Schmerztagebüchern [ 30 ]. Allerdings fehlen auch für diese digitalen Dokumentationsanwendungen derzeit multizentrische RCT auf internationaler Ebene sowie eine breite klinische Umsetzung [ 30 ].…”