Treatment-Seeking for Orofacial Pain in Adolescents: Parental Influences

Objectives: Psycho-social factors within the family are assumed to influence pain prevalence and health services use. It was aim of this cross-sectional study to analyze whether pain report of parents is associated with orofacial pain report and treatment seeking in adolescents. Method: Subjects were a randomly-selected subset of 461 children and adolescents aged 10-18 years (13.6 ± 1.8 years, 50% female) from a population based sample from the Halle/Saale metropolitan area. The prevalence of orofacial pain and use of health service during the past month (outcomes) were assessed according to the RDC/TMD (Dworkin and LeResche, 1992). Additionally, subjects were asked whether their mothers and/or fathers experience any type of pain (exposure). Differences were tested using chi-square-statistics. Results: Eighteen percent of the adolescents (N = 89) reported orofacial pain during the past month; pain was more prevalent in females (22%; N = 56) than males (14%, N = 33; x2(df 1) = 4.9, P = 0.04). 34% (N = 177) observed that their parents experienced pain. There were no statistically significant differences in the prevalence of orofacial pain in subjects with (21%, N = 42) or without (16%, N = 47) parental pain report (x2(df 1) = 1.3, P = 0.45). Ten percent (N = 11) of the subjects with orofacial pain had sought treatment during the past month. Among those subjects, the great majority (83%, N = 9) had parents with positive pain report vs. 36% (N = 33) in the group who did not seek treatment because of orofacial pain (x2(df 1) = 7.2, P < 0.01). Gender was not a significant factor in this analysis. Conclusion: Parental pain report does not appear to influence the prevalence of orofacial pain in their children, but may influence treatment demand. Supported by Kultusministerium Sachsen-Anhalt (Grant 3292A/0080G).