Validation of Multidimensional Animal Pain Scale (MAPS) for Odontological Pain in Children

Purpouse: To develop and evaluate face, consensus, convergent and disciminative validity of a multidimensional pain scale in the pediatric dental patient. Methods: This was a cross sectional study. Children of 5 to 11 years, both genders was included. The final instrument consisted of a cardboard with the animal figures printed on one side (butterfly, duck, dog, wolf, and dinosaur) and on the other a scale of 1 to 10. Testretest reliability, correlation between figures and circles of different sizes and association between changes in the level of pain before a nociceptive stimulus prior to an odontological procedure were evaluated. Results: The intraclass coefficient was 0.84 [0.69–0.89]. Multivariate analysis showed significant association independent of the sex or age, between the animal figures of the MAPS and the diameter of the circles (p <0.0001), and painful stimulus (p<0.05). A correlation of 0.95 between MAPS and the Visual Analogue Scale was observed. Conclusion: The scale proposed here encompasses both the affective / emotional and the somatosensory dimensions. Its reproducibility and easy application allow establishing management strategies in both dimensions of pain.