Prevalence of pain combinations and overall pain

Abstract

The prevalence of pain combinations among school children is addressed in view of earlier findings of high pain prevalence in this population. The study considers the prevelance of combinations of three common pains — headache, stomach pain and back pain — in a random national sample of 2173 Icelandic 11–12 and 15–16 year-old school children. According to the results from this study there is a 78.2% prevalence of monthly pain. One or more instances of weekly pain is experienced by 40.4% of the children, and 15.6% experience two or three pains weekly. Relevance of gender is greater when dealing with combinations of monthly than weekly pain. Combinations of weekly pains are more gender related than single weekly pains. Girls have significantly more frequent overall pain than boys. The distribution of pain combinations varies by age but not overall pain. The study yields important information about the extent of the overall problem of pain among school children and indicates the need to further study the correlates of different pain combinations in this age group.