Agreement between youth and caregiver report of pain and functioning in pediatric sickle cell disease: PedsQL sickle cell disease module

Abstract

Pain is a primary symptom of sickle cell disease (SCD) and is often severe and chronic. To treat SCD-related pain, proper assessment of SCD pain among youth, including the degree of concordance or agreement between youth and caregiver reports of pain, is essential but has not yet been adequately evaluated. In this study, 525 youth with SCD and their parents were evaluated as part of the Sickle Cell Clinical Research and Intervention Program (SCCRIP) to examine pain rating concordance and predictors of concordance. Youth and parents completed the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Sickle Cell Disease module (PedsQL-SCD) to measure pain, pain interference, and pain-related constructs. Disease, clinical, and demographic variables were obtained from the SCCRIP database. Intraclass correlations demonstrated moderate-to-poor consistency between youth and caregiver reports of pain and pain interference (ICCs range from 0.17 to 0.54). Analysis of covariance and regression models found that patient age, frequency of hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits, economic hardship, and fetal hemoglobin levels were significantly associated with varying pain-rating agreement levels among parent proxy and child self-report pain. Concordance of pain assessments among youth with SCD and their caregivers using the PedsQL-SCD Module was moderate at best, corroborating prior research. Youth factors predicting discordance among pain-related factors included increased ED visits, older age, and female sex. Collectively, these results bolster the use of integrated pain assessments to reduce parent-child discrepancies, thereby improving the adequacy of SCD-related pain assessment and treatment.

Figure 1.

Spearman correlation (ρ_s) between youth and caregiver reports across age groups on the Pain and Hurt (A) and Pain Impact (B) scales.