ArticleEClinicalMedicine2022
Paediatric chronic pain prevalence in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Article in EClinicalMedicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Epidemiology of Pediatric Chronic Pain: An Overview of Systematic Reviews.Current pain and headache reports · 2025Pooled it
- Prevalence of orofacial and head pain: an umbrella review of systematic reviews.Journal of oral & facial pain and headache · 2024Pooled it
- Level of Agreement in Perceived Improvement in a Cohort of Parent-Child Dyads Following an Interdisciplinary Pain Management Program.Paediatric & neonatal pain · 2026Article
- Sociodemographic differences in the prevalence of recurrent extremity pain in Icelandic schoolchildren: results from the WHO-collaborative Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) cross-sectional survey.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Current psychological intervention alternatives for the treatment of paediatric headaches: a narrative review.Journal of oral & facial pain and headache · 2025Review
- The Concept of Pain in Children Attending Primary School: Implications for School-Based Pain Education.Pain research & management · 2025Article
- Prevalence of neurocognitive impairments in adults with chronic pain: A cross-sectional study.The South African journal of psychiatry : SAJP : the journal of the Society of Psychiatrists of South Africa · 2025Article
- Pain, dietary habits and physical activity of children with developmental disabilities in Croatia, North Macedonia and Serbia: a cross-sectional study.BMC pediatrics · 2024Article
- Barriers and Facilitators to the Implementation of Virtual Reality Interventions for People With Chronic Pain: Scoping Review.JMIR XR and spatial computing · 2024Review
- Parental Response to Children's Chronic Pain.Cureus · 2023Article
- "We survived the pandemic together": The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadian families living with chronic pain.Canadian journal of pain = Revue canadienne de la douleur · 2023Article
- Article
- Identifying and Managing Suicidality in Children and Adolescents with Chronic Pain: Evidence-Based Treatment Strategies.Psychology research and behavior management · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundChronic pain is a leading cause of morbidity in children and adolescents globally, with a significant impact on quality of life. This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis on paediatric chronic pain in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
methodsFollowing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we searched MEDLINE (via PubMed), Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the WHO Global Index Medicus for all studies published prior to January 7, 2022. Articles published in all languages that included populations age 19 years and under living in LMICs were considered. Chronic pain was defined as persistent or recurrent pain that is present for ≥3 months, per the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) definition. Summary data were extracted from published reports and evaluated with mixed-effects regression analysis. PROSPERO Record ID: CRD42021227967.
findingsOf the 2875 studies identified, 70 articles were reviewed, with 27 studies representing 20 LMICs eligible for analysis. The average prevalence for each pain type reported with 95% confidence interval is as follows: general/multi-site/any 20% (16-25), musculoskeletal (MSK) pain 9% (7-13), abdominal pain 7% (5-10), headache 4% (2-10), and fibromyalgia per American College of Rheumatology or Yunus and Masi criteria 3% (1-10). Overall, a pooled mean of 8% chronic pain was estimated across all studies. A significantly high level of heterogeneity was found across all studies (
interpretationThe characterization of paediatric chronic pain in low- and middle-income countries suffers from a paucity of data and significant heterogeneity in the assessment methods. Understanding the global burden of chronic pain in this group should be prioritized.
fundingNone.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.