(343) The pain burden inventory: a brief measure of pain interference

Brief self-report measures of pain interference are necessary for youth with chronic pain. We report the reliability and validity of the Pain Burden Inventory-Youth (PBI-Y), a 7-item measure of the impact of chronic pain in youth. The PBI-Y was initially validated in youth with sickle cell disease. This study expands on our original work by focusing on a broader population of youth with chronic pain conditions. The charts of 130 consecutive youth presenting for an initial pediatric chronic pain clinic evaluation were examined with 98 (mean age = 14.49; 66% female) comprising this final sample. A wide array of pain diagnoses was seen including abdominal pain, headaches, back pain, and amplified musculoskeletal pain. The PBI-Y demonstrated strong internal reliability (a = .792) and strong cross-informant concordance (r = .822; p = .000). Good construct validity was seen where higher scores on the PBI-Y were correlated with higher scores of (1) functional disability (r = .689; p = .000), (2) pain catastrophizing (r = .494; p = .000), (3) pain frequency days (r = .526; p = .000), (4) usual pain intensity (r = .467; p = .000) and (5) the worst pain intensity (r = .485; p = .000). Similar results were seen with caregiver assessments. Neither caregiver nor youth reports differed based on the gender or age of the child. The PBI-Y is a brief measure of pain interference that may have great utility for clinicians caring for youth with chronic pain.