Animal-assisted Therapy for Children and Adolescents With Chronic Pain

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Chronic Pain
• Interventions: Behavioral: Animal-assisted therapy

• Registration Number: NCT04171336
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland

Brief Summary

Chronic pain is highly prevalent in children and adolescents, up to one in four children will develop pain that persists or recurs for three or more months. Chronic pain is not only linked to significant psychological, physical, and social concerns for affected children and their families, but also places an enormous burden on healthcare systems - in the United States, chronic pain costs around $19.5 billion dollars each year and ranks among the most expensive pediatric health problems. Chronic pain significantly decreases quality of life and is associated with numerous missing days at school or at work.

Several interventions exist, however, for some, the risk-benefit profile is not favorable, or the effect sizes are small and the clinical effect can be questioned. In general, a multidisciplinary approach that includes medical, psychological, and physiological aspects has been shown to be most promising in the treatment of chronic pain in children and adolescents.

Clinical impressions suggest that an Animal-assisted Therapy (AAT) intervention could be promising, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effectiveness of an AAT intervention for children and adolescents with chronic pain. With this pragmatic trials investigators aim to investigate the pre- and post-intervention differences in pain levels, levels of emotional distress, and quality of life within participants with chronic pain.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2019-11-14
• Study First Submitted QC: 2019-11-19
• Study First Posted: 2019-11-20
• Study Start: 2020-09-05
• Primary Completion: 2021-04-10
• Status Verified: 2021-05
• Study Completion: 2021-05-02
• Last Update Submitted: 2021-05-17
• Last Update Posted: 2021-05-18

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 3

Inclusion Criteria

• Children and adolescents aged 8-15 years
• Suffering from chronic pain (i.e., persistent or recurrent pain for 3 or more months, associated with significant emotional distress or functional limitations)
• Willing to work with therapy animals
• Fluent in German
• Willingness to participate

Exclusion Criteria

• children younger than 7 years or adolescents older than 16 years of age
• Acute pain
• Allergy to animals Aversion against animals

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: SINGLE_GROUP

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Animal-assisted group therapy	Animal-assisted therapy	-

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Pain Severity assessed by Visual Analogue Scale	6 weeks	Self-reported pain severity scored on a 0-10 scale, reported before and after each session. Higher scores indicate higher pain severity.
Pain Defocussing assessed by Visual Analogue Scale	6 weeks	Self-reported pain defocussing scored on a 0-10 scale, reported before and after each session. Higher scores indicate more pain defocussing.
Pain Intensity assessed by Visual Analogue Scale	12 weeks	Self-reported pain intensity scored on a 0-10 scale, reported before and after each session. Higher scores indicate higher pain intensity.
Pain Interference assessed by Visual Analogue Scale	6 weeks	Self-reported pain interference scored on a 0-10 scale, reported before and after each session. Higher scores indicate more pain interference.
Pain Acceptance assessed by Visual Analogue Scale	6 weeks	Self-reported pain acceptance scored on a 0-10 scale, reported before and after each session. Higher scores indicate more pain acceptance.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Faculty of Psychology, University of Basel; 🇨🇭 Basel, Switzerland