Clinical Trial: Understanding Pediatric Chest Pain and Other Symptoms

Study Status: Completed
Recruit Status: Completed
Study Type: Observational

Official Title: Understanding Pediatric Symptoms and Other Symptoms

Brief Summary:

The causes of pediatric pain are often not the same for every child. Most children who visit a cardiology specialist with complaints of chest or other somatic pain have no known medical diagnosis to explain their symptoms. These children and their families often leave with no explanation for the child's distress.

This early study will ask parents and children specific questions related to the stress in their lives, their emotional well-being and the children's physical functioning. The investigators want children who experience chest and other somatic pain, and those who do not, to be in their study so that they can look at both groups.

The investigators hope to use these answers to better inform cardiologists who often work with children with non-cardiac pain and, in turn, help them to better serve their patients. Ultimately, the investigators hope that the answers they get will provide answers to these families. They also hope to use the results of this study to put together a short screener for the cardiologist to give to pediatric patients with complaints of chest or other somatic pain to help the cardiologists better understand their patients' symptoms.

Detailed Summary:

The current investigation will address some similar factors considered in prior research, but will considerably extend our understanding of how psychological, familial, and environmental factors influence noncardiac chest pain. In this investigation, a number of variables that have not been considered in prior research in this area will be included. Among these child variables are: the children's pain coping strategies, the children's somatization behaviors aside from chest pain, the children's externalizing symptoms (e.g., symptoms of ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder), school related problems, social competencies, parental perceptions of the child's vulnerability, functional disability (the degree to which chest pain interferes with normal daily functioning), and the child's health care utilization. Also, a more sensitive quantification of the children's frequency and intensity of chest pain will be collected, as well as information on situations in which the pain occurs. Parent report of child functioning and child self-report will be used to assess children's behavior. The parental factors to be assessed include the parents' own physical conditions and health care utilization, as well as the parents' psychological functioning. The amount of changes and stress the family as a whole has experienced in different domains will also be assessed as well. Measures of these constructs, as well as children's anxiety and depression (similar to Lipsitz et al. reviewed above) will be collected at the time of the original appointment.

With the exception of the chest pain measure, quantification of these variables will be collected for both chest pain and innocent murmur patients between the ages of 8 and 18 years of age at the time of their initial appointment. Further, approximately one month following the medical assessment by the cardiologists, the parents and children will be
Sponsor: Emory University

Current Primary Outcome: Change in Children Depression Inventory [ Time Frame: Baseline, 4 weeks ]

Original Primary Outcome:

Current Secondary Outcome:

Original Secondary Outcome:

Information By: Emory University

Dates:
Date Received: September 13, 2005
Date Started: March 2004
Date Completion:
Last Updated: February 24, 2015
Last Verified: February 2015