Background: To date only few studies have addressed the level of intelligence of children and adolescents with chronic pain. The few currently available studies suggest a cognitive performance of pediatric pain patients in the average range (IQ 85-115); however, only little is known about the relationship between pain characteristics and cognitive skills.
Objective: The aim of the study was to retrospectively examine the intelligence scores of severely impaired pediatric chronic pain patients to improve the knowledge about the association of pain and cognitive performance and to create a basis for further prospective studies.
Material and methods: In the exploratory evaluation data from N = 180 children and adolescents who were treated as inpatients at the German Pediatric Pain Center in Datteln in 2016 were included. Due to the standardization of the IQ scores a comparison within the sample was possible as well as a comparison to the norm sample.
Results: The intelligence level of severely impaired pediatric pain patients fell within the normal range (M = 99.32; SD = 14.13). Neither the main pain location nor the emotional variables or pain parameters (e.g. pain intensity) had a significant association with the IQ scores. Compared to the norm sample, pediatric pain patients had a higher processing speed. Intraindividual comparisons showed a significantly lower verbal IQ than performance IQ and a lower verbal comprehension compared to perceptual organization and processing speed. Moreover, there was a negative association between pain intensity, the verbal IQ and verbal comprehension.
Conclusion: The results support the assumption that the intellectual performance of pediatric pain patients lies within the average range; however, the results indicate a limited competence in verbal abstraction and expressiveness of pediatric pain patients, which are negatively related to pain intensity. Further studies to examine causal relationships are needed.
Keywords: Children and adolescents; Chronic pain; Inpatient pain therapy; Intellectual functioning; Intelligence.