Archives de pédiatrie : organe officiel de la Sociéte française de pédiatrie
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Chronic pain in children and adolescents has a major impact on their life in terms of school, sleep as well as family and social life. Teenagers aged 13-15 and girls are at the highest risk. Zeltzer et al. established a bio-psychosocial model of chronic pain in 1998 to account for all its dimensions and advocated a multidisciplinary management plan. Programs based on their principles target specific symptoms such as anxiety and loss of function, while treating underlying factors and teaching coping skills to patients and their families. They aim for patients to regain autonomy rather than focusing on pain resolution. Such programs, with varied protocols, have existed outside of France for approximately 15 years. The efficacy of these multidisciplinary programs has been shown in studies in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. To our knowledge, there are no French studies on this topic; therefore, our aim was to describe a French program. We hypothesized that the program would be effective in reducing chronic pain and its impact. ⋯ The multidisciplinary pain management program in this French pediatric functional rehabilitation center shows results comparable to the programs described in other countries. Chronic pain should be evaluated with standardized and validated tools, such as the measurement of the pain-related disability with the Functional Disability Index.