J Pediatr Psychol

Brief report: behavioral correlates of postoperative pain in toddlers and preschoolers.

Year 1998
Christiano B. Tarbell SE.
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pennsylvania 15213, USA. bethc@pcicirs.pci.pitt.edu
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between preoperative parent and child behaviors and postoperative pain in toddlers and preschoolers. METHOD: Participants were 74 pediatric patients (59 boys, 15 girls), scheduled for inguinal hernia or hydrocele repair, and their parents. Children ranged in age from 12 to 64 months (M = 33.7 months, SD = 14.7 months). Child and parent behaviors were assessed 30 minutes prior to surgery using the Behavioral Observation Scale (BOS), a modified version of the Dyadic Prestressor Interaction Scale (Melamed & Bush, 1985. Postoperative pain was assessed using an observational measure, the Toddler-Preschooler Postoperative Pain Scale (TPPPS) (Tarbell, Cohen, & Marsh, 1992). RESULTS: Postoperative pain was negatively related to parents' provision of surgery-relevant information during the preoperative observation period. CONCLUSIONS: Preoperative interventions for young children should include information about the surgery experience.