• Jennifer Bergeron and Benoit Bailey.
• From the Department of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, CHU Sainte-Justine, Montreal, QC, Canada.
• Pediatr Emerg Care. 2021 Jul 1; 37 (7): e356e359e356-e359.

ObjectivesTo determine the acute pain level associated with request for analgesia by children and their parents in the pediatric emergency department (ED) when pain was assessed by verbal numeric scale (VNS), visual analog scale (VAS), and verbal rating scale (VRS).MethodsA secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study using a sample of children aged 8 to 17 presenting to the ED with acute pain. Patients and their parents were asked to quantify the child's pain on the VNS, VAS, and VRS. Scores for patients and parents who answered "yes" to the request of analgesia were compared with those responding "no."ResultsA total of 202 patients aged 12.2 ± 2.6 years were enrolled. The median levels of pain associated with a request of analgesia and no request for analgesia by the patient were: 6.0 (4.0-7.4) and 5.0 (3.0-6.0) (Δ 1.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.5-2.0) for the VNS; 5.7 (3.9-7.2) and 4.3 (2.6-5.8) (Δ 1.3; 95% CI, 0.6-1.9) for the VAS; and 2.0 (2.0-2.0) and 2.0 (1.0-2.0) (Δ 0.0; 95% CI, 0.0-0.0) for the VRS.ConclusionsChildren who requested analgesia had higher pain scores on the VNS and the VAS, than those who did not request analgesia. No difference was demonstrated with the VRS. The pain scores between the analgesia request categories could overlap. This suggests that children seen in the ED should be asked if they want analgesia to decrease their acute pain.Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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