GET Living: Graded Exposure Treatment for Children and Adolescents With Chronic Pain

Boston Children's Hospital

Status: Completed

Conditions: Musculoskeletal Pain; Chronic Pain; Headache; Neuralgia

Treatments: Behavioral: GET Living

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01974791

IRB-P00007276

82267 (Other Grant/Funding Number)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The broad aim of the study is to implement and evaluate the efficacy of Graded Exposure Treatment (GET Living) to target elevated pain-related fears in children with chronic pain. Pain-related fear is an important psychological factor associated with poor outcomes in children suffering with chronic pain. To examine the efficacy of GET Living in addressing pain-related fears the investigators propose to use a sequential replicated randomized single-case experimental phase design with multiple measures. The specific aims are to 1) evaluate the effectiveness and acceptability of individually tailored GET Living for children with high pain-related fear and functional disability and 2) define anatomical and resting state connectivity patterns in the brains of children and adolescents with complex chronic pain prior to and after participation in GET Living.

Enrollment: 34 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 8 to 18 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Pain-related fear (score >40 on the Fear of Pain Questionnaire (FOPQ (Simons et al., 2011a))
• Musculoskeletal, neuropathic limb or back pain, or headache
• Functional limitations (score > 12 on the Functional Disability Inventory (FDI (Kashikar-Zuck et al., 2001; Walker and Greene, 1991)).

Exclusion criteria

• Significant cognitive impairment (e.g., intellectual disability)
• Serious psychopathology (e.g., active suicidality).
• Acute trauma (e.g., spondylolithesis, disk herniation, fracture, acute tendonitis)
• Systemic disease in active inflammatory state
• Biomechanical deficit that would limit ability to engage in exposure activities (e.g. severe muscle atrophy)
• Making gains in current physical therapy or have not had physical therapy, but it is clearly indicated

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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34 participants in 1 patient group

GET Living Treatment

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: GET Living