Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Oct 1, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 18, 2024 - Nov 13, 2024
Date Accepted: Mar 21, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Pain Assessment Tools in Infants, Children, and Adolescents with Cancer: A Scoping Review Protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
Pain management in children with cancer is inadequate due to poor pain assessment, and evaluation using suitable tools is necessary. Despite the availability of many pain assessment scales, few studies have summarized the existing assessment tools, making it challenging to select a suitable scale.
Objective:
This scoping review aims to map existing pain assessment tools for children with cancer and provide a comprehensive overview of pediatric cancer-related pain screening and assessment tools.
Methods:
The scoping review will be conducted according to the guidelines by the Joanna Briggs Institute and reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews framework. Electronic databases, including PubMed, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature), CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), ICHUSHI (Japan Medical Abstracts Society), and Embase, were searched to identify eligible studies on November 20, 2023, without date or language restrictions. Studies that focused on assessment tools for evaluating pain in children (0-18 years) with cancer in a hospital or at home will be included. Two or more reviewers will select studies and extract data, and disagreements will be resolved through discussion. Pain assessment tools will be summarized in tabular format and described in a narrative synthesis.
Results:
Through electronic database searches, we identified 3748 articles. This review will provide a comprehensive overview of pain assessment tools.
Conclusions:
This scoping review is the first comprehensive effort to map existing tools for assessing pediatric cancer pain according to developmental stages. The findings are expected to enhance pain management practices in children with cancer and inform healthcare providers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. Clinical Trial: As this is a scoping review, registration in the trial registry is not mandatory. Therefore, this study provides preliminary planning through the publication of this protocol.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.