Pain Assessment Scales for Children Hospitalized in Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Introduction: the existence of multiple scales and the lack of real consensus on their use in Pediatric Intensive Care Units, evidences the existing difficulty in pain assessment.

Objective: characterize the scientific production on pain assessment scales for children hospitalized in Intensive Care Units.

Methods: bibliometric, descriptive study. The search was limited to the years of publication from January 2018 to December 2022 in SciELO, BDENF, IBECS, LILACS, Scopus, WHOLIS, Dialnet and MEDLINE in English, Portuguese and Spanish. The frequency of occurrence of the bibliometric indicators of production, visibility and impact, the Price index and the annual collaboration index were calculated.

Results: 32 articles were identified; the year of greatest scientific productivity was 2021. In relation to the number of publications per author and distribution of articles per number of authors, 96,87 % respond to the publication of a single article per author. The bibliometric indicators of visibility and impact show that only 31,25 % were original articles and the number of bibliographic references per article was greater than 30. The Price index ranged between 0,49 and 0,68. The scientific collaboration index had an average of 3,11.

Conclusions: The scientific production available in relation to scales for pain assessment in Pediatric Intensive Care Units showed a non-uniform pattern of publications when bibliometric indicators were taken into account. There is no leadership among researchers, journals and institutions in research on the topic, which limited the study to production indicators and visibility and impact indicators.