Care-related Pain and Discomfort in Children and Adults With Motor Disorder in Medical Establishments

The combination of motor disabilities, chronic pain, cognitive disabilities limiting the possibilities of communications and repeated potentially painful rehabilitation, exposes patients with motor disabilities to a high risk of induced pain in the specialized establishments. Induced pain is difficult to detect and is therefore little assessed and treated. Currently, little is known about the prevalence and conditions of occurrence of such induced pain as the clinical characteristics of patients (children, adults, severity of disability), the types of care and the nature of the institutional admission (medical or medico-social). Secondary objectives are to identify risk factors related to the induced pain and patient characteristics, as well as to create an easy-to-use weekly continuous pain assessment tool in a routine clinical set-up.

All daily life procedures or treatment carried out in children and adults with motor disability are collected for 5 days and 1 night. Collected data are clinical and demographic characteristics of patients, the intensity of the pain assessed by the care professional (FLACC-r) or the patient himself (VAS).

Clinically, the uncomfortable and painful procedures and risk factors for pain identified by this study will help the development of targeted preventive measures within institutions. Meanwhile, the study should sensitize Breton teams involved with regards to the induced pain, leading them to observe the behavior of patients, to admit any pain related to an act of daily life, and to ask for the medical profession to anticipate the painful experience.