The correlation between the quality of pain and fatigue in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between the quality of pain and fatigue in ALL children 1–3 days after chemotherapy. A cross-sectional design with a consecutive sampling technique was used to 44 ALL children in Jakarta aged 7–18 years as the samples. Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) and Allen-Child Oncology Fatigue questionnaire were used to measure quality of pain and fatigue. The obtained mean scores for the quality of pain were 1.63932, and the mean score for fatigue was 9.25. The results also showed that there was a significant relationship between the quality of pain and fatigue (p = 0.006), relapse status and fatigue (p = 0.058), and companion when in pain and fatigue (p = 0.016) in children with ALL. These study recommend the importance of pain assessment and management of pharmacological and non-pharmacological combinations for post-chemotherapy pain to reduce fatigue in cancer children.