CAM-Pain Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Child and Adolescent Musculoskeletal Pain study: A feasibility study in primary care
IRAS ID
193264
Contact name
Kate Dunn
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Keele University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Musculoskeletal symptoms such as foot, knee and back pain are common in adults, and lead to time off work and general practitioner (GP) visits. Such conditions often last for many years; over 80% of adults seeing their GP about back pain report having had it for a long time. It is therefore difficult to find out what causes people to have these problems in the first place. Surveys show that up to 40% of children report musculoskeletal symptoms such as pain during any one month, so this may be the start of long-term problems. However, there are relatively few studies of children visiting their GP about musculoskeletal symptoms, and none in primary care in the UK, so we know little about who gets persistent pain and who recovers quickly. Finding out more about musculoskeletal symptoms in children may help to find out what causes long-term problems, and hopefully how to prevent them. As there are few studies of musculoskeletal symptoms in children in primary care, we also know little about how to do such studies, e.g. inviting children (and their parent / guardian) to take part, and collecting information about pain and its impact on their life, although we can learn from studies of children with other diseases, and studies of pain in adults.
We therefore intend to test a way of inviting children to take part in such a study, and ways of collecting information from them. We plan to invite around 170 children to take part in the study and hope that at least 50 of them will agree. A research nurse will visit participants and interview them about their musculoskeletal symptoms and related issues. The findings from this feasibility study will be used to inform the design of a larger long-term study in children.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EM/0291
Date of REC Opinion
19 Aug 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion