Pain Assessment Tools for Infants, Children, and Adolescents With Cancer: Protocol for a Scoping Review.

Background: Pain management in children with cancer may be inadequate due to poor pain assessment, and evaluation using suitable tools is necessary. Despite the availability of many pain assessment scales, few studies have summarized the existing assessment tools, making it challenging to select a suitable scale.

Objective: This scoping review aims to map existing pain assessment tools for children with cancer and provide a comprehensive overview of pediatric cancer-related pain screening and assessment tools.

Methods: The scoping review will be conducted according to the guidelines by the Joanna Briggs Institute and reported following the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) framework. Electronic databases, including PubMed, CINAHL, CENTRAL, ICHUSHI (Japan Medical Abstracts Society), and Embase, will be searched to identify eligible studies, without date or language restrictions. We defined the eligibility criteria based on the PCC (Population, Concept, and Context) format. Studies that focused on assessment tools for evaluating pain in children (aged 0-18 years) with cancer in a hospital or at home will be included. Although there are no restrictions on study design, protocols and conference abstracts will be excluded. Two or more reviewers will select studies by reviewing the full text of relevant articles identified by titles and abstracts, and disagreements will be resolved through discussion. Two or more reviewers will extract predefined data items, including characteristics of included studies (eg, author name, title of publication, year of publication, purpose of study, study setting, study population, outline of the assessment tool, study design, and findings) and the characteristics of assessment tools (eg, types of tools, target population, assessor, validity, instructions, precautions, and advantages and disadvantages of the tools). Pain assessment tools will be summarized in tabular format and described in a narrative synthesis.

Results: Through electronic database searches on November 20, 2023, we identified 3748 articles. This review will provide a comprehensive overview of pain assessment tools. The final report is planned for submission to a peer-reviewed journal in 2025.

Conclusions: This scoping review is the first comprehensive effort to map existing tools on pediatric cancer-related pain assessment tools for infants, children, and adolescents aged <18 years, according to developmental stages. Based on the findings of this study, we will discuss future clinical and research implications for pain assessment and management in children with cancer. The findings are expected to enhance pain management practices in children with cancer and inform health care providers, policy makers, and other stakeholders.

International registered report identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/66614.