• Jennifer A Rabbitts, Tonya M Palermo, Chuan Zhou, and Rita Mangione-Smith.
• Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, Washington. Electronic address: jennifer.rabbitts@seattlechildrens.org.
• J Pain. 2015 Dec 1; 16 (12): 1334-41.

UnlabelledAround 4 million children undergo inpatient surgery in the United States each year, however little is known about the impact of surgery and postoperative pain on children's health-related quality of life (HRQOL) during the weeks and months after surgery. We measured pain and HRQOL in a large, heterogeneous pediatric postsurgical population from baseline to 1-month follow-up. Over a 20-month period, parents of 915 children age 2 to 18 years (mean = 9.6 years), 50% male, 56% white, admitted to surgical services at a children's hospital enrolled in the study. Parent participants reported on sociodemographics, child HRQOL, and pain characteristics at baseline and 1 month after discharge. Although most of the children recovered to baseline by 1 month after hospital discharge, 23% of children had a significant decline in HRQOL. Logistic regression analyses found that increasing child age (odds ratio = 2.1 for age 13-18 years) and the presence of moderate-severe postsurgical pain at 1 month (odds ratio = 5.7) were significantly associated with deterioration in HRQOL from baseline to 1-month follow-up (P < .05 for each variable). Although HRQOL returns to the baseline level for most children, a sizeable proportion have significant deterioration in HRQOL associated with continued postsurgical pain at 1 month after hospital discharge from surgery.PerspectiveThis study addresses an important gap in the literature, examining pain and health-related quality of life in a broad population of children undergoing a wide range of inpatient surgeries. Evaluation of inpatient health services from a patient and family perspective is essential in evaluating outcomes of surgical care.Copyright © 2015 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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