ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Dental pain exerts a considerable impact on the psychosocial well-being of children; reliable management of pain depends on the ability to assess pain intensity. AIM: To validate and compare a new memojis pain assessment scale with the Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) and Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale (WBFPS) in assessing dental pain experienced by children. DESIGN: Two hundred and fifty healthy children aged 5-9 years without any past dental experience and requiring local anaesthesia (LA) administration were recruited. Three different scales [FPS-R, WBFPS and Memojis Pain Scale (MPS)] were applied to assess the children's pain during LA administration. The preferences of each child based on the ease of understanding the faces were recorded. RESULTS: Pearson correlation test was performed to determine the correlation between MPS with WBFPS and MPS with FPS-R. A strong correlation was seen when comparing MPS with WBFPS (r = .966; p < .001) and MPS with FPS-R (r = .969; p < .001), and 81.6% of the children preferred MPS. CONCLUSION: The Memojis Pain Scale was an effective pain assessment tool. It can be employed as an alternative scale for pain assessment in children.
