Development and Validation of a New Pain Scale for Children

In clinical practice with young children, gold standard rating scales used to evaluate the pain are VAS (Visual Analogue Scale) and FPS-R (Faces Pain Scale - Revised), which are self-assessment tools. These scales present however certain limitations: the VAS is not applicable if the child does not know how to estimate the distances, as young children, or children with mental retardation. As for FPS-R, it can be frightening for children by the aspect of faces looking like impersonal masks.

For children under 4 years, only hetero-evaluation based on typical behavioral scales as Face Legs Activity Cry Consolability (FLACC) can be used, according to the current recommendations.

We thus wanted to create a new faces scale with teddy bear faces, which are cross-cultural and timeless. Our objective is to validate the new teddy scale in its paper shape on a wide sample of children. We made the hypothesis that the teddy scale would enable to evaluate the pain in the same way that the FPS-R, being better accepted and preferred by children.

The first phase of this study will be to develop the teddy scale with a sample of 30 healthy children from 4 to 11 year-old, having already experienced pain. This stage allows the validation of the images chosen for the scale, to make sure of their relevance and their optimal recognition by the children.

The scale will then be validated with a sample of 218 hospitalized children from 2 to 11 years old, to whom pain is usually evaluated in a systematic way. Children from 4 to 11 years old will have simultaneously the teddy scale, the VAS and the FPS-R. They will be asked to determine which scale they preferred. Children from 2 to 4 years old will have the teddy scale; the FLACC will be filled in by parents.

Tested hypothesis: The discriminating characteristic of the teddy scale is superior to that of the FPS-R scale The validation of the teddy scale will enable to objectify children's pain, to facilitate the decision-making in the choice of the analgesic to prescribe, and to check the efficiency of these decisions. This teddy scale could be used in current practice as a replacement of the FPS-R.

Following this study, we planned to set up a second project in which the teddy scale will be adapted to electronic form (touchpads), to test its adaptability with the children.