Screening and Impact of Neuropathic Pain in Young Individuals With Sickle Cell Disease

Amira Adly; Maha Mohammed; Ahmed Aboata; Ghada Wassif; Marwa Nassef; Sara Makkeyah

doi:10.1002/pbc.31493

Screening and Impact of Neuropathic Pain in Young Individuals With Sickle Cell Disease

Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2024 Dec 17:e31493. doi: 10.1002/pbc.31493. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Amira Adly¹, Maha Mohammed², Ahmed Aboata¹, Ghada Wassif³, Marwa Nassef⁴, Sara Makkeyah¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology & BMT Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
² Department of Pediatrics, Pediatric Neurology Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
³ Department of Community, Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
⁴ Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.

PMID: 39690799
DOI: 10.1002/pbc.31493

Abstract

Objective: To assess the frequency of neuropathic pain (NP) and its impact in young patients with sickle cell disease (SCD).

Methods: We used the ID-Pain (ID-P) questionnaire and a bedside clinical sensory testing (CST) as screening tools for NP and performed sensory nerve conduction study (SNCS) for all the participants. The impact of pain was assessed using Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) questionnaires and Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) SCD module.

Results: The mean age was 12.4 years. The ID-P questionnaire revealed that 20.5% of patients likely had NP, while 10 (34%) of the participants had abnormal CST, and only two patients (4.5%) had abnormal SNCS. On the PROMIS pain scores, the mean pain intensity score was 7.9 ± 2.0. Pain interference was the most affected domain in both patients and parent proxy reports (mean ± SD T-score 63.4 ± 6.6 and 65.2 ± 6.6, respectively) which was worse than other domains including pain quality-sensory and affective, and pain behavior (median T-scores of 47.8, 63.0, and 56.2, respectively). The mean global health-related quality of life (HRQoL) score of the children was 50.3 ± 12.1 indicating poor quality of life.

Conclusion: We report the utility of simple tools like ID-P questionnaire and CST for screening of NP in young individuals with SCD.

Keywords: ID‐Pain questionnaire; Patient Reported Outcome Measures; Pediatric Health Related Quality Of Life; clinical sensory testing; neuropathic pain; sickle cell disease.