MedTrace Logo

Animal-assisted Therapy for Children and Adolescents With Chronic Pain

NCT04171336 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 3

Last updated 2021-05-18

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Chronic pain is highly prevalent in children and adolescents, up to one in four children will develop pain that persists or recurs for three or more months. Chronic pain is not only linked to significant psychological, physical, and social concerns for affected children and their families, but also places an enormous burden on healthcare systems - in the United States, chronic pain costs around $19.5 billion dollars each year and ranks among the most expensive pediatric health problems. Chronic pain significantly decreases quality of life and is associated with numerous missing days at school or at work.

Several interventions exist, however, for some, the risk-benefit profile is not favorable, or the effect sizes are small and the clinical effect can be questioned. In general, a multidisciplinary approach that includes medical, psychological, and physiological aspects has been shown to be most promising in the treatment of chronic pain in children and adolescents.

Clinical impressions suggest that an Animal-assisted Therapy (AAT) intervention could be promising, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effectiveness of an AAT intervention for children and adolescents with chronic pain. With this pragmatic trials investigators aim to investigate the pre- and post-intervention differences in pain levels, levels of emotional distress, and quality of life within participants with chronic pain.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Animal-assisted therapy

Six sessions of animal-assisted intervention for children and adolescents, group format. The sessions will focus on psycho-education on pain, mindfulness, defocusing, getting active, and resources. Additionally, the intervention includes two family visits.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Helen Koechlin, PhD · Faculty of Psychology, University of Basel, Switzerland

  • Cosima Locher, PhD · Faculty of Psychology, University of Basel, Switzerland

  • Jens Gaab, Prof Dr · Faculty of Psychology, University of Basel, Switzerland

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
8 Years
Max Age
16 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-09-05
Primary Completion
2021-04-10
Completion
2021-05-02

Countries

  • Switzerland

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04171336 on ClinicalTrials.gov