Concerns Over Chronic Pain in Lleida Children

Children’s pain was the real subject in Lleida this week — not as a side symptom, but as a health problem in its own right. At a Fibrolleida event held Tuesday, May 12, at the Auditori Enric Granados, psychologist Jordi Miró said severe chronic pain affects about 5% of minors in the province. That matters because this is the kind of pain that can come with disability, missed school, sleep problems, and a much harder family life. The gap, basically, is that pediatric pain still gets treated as invisible even when the numbers are not small. ### What happened in Lleida? Miró, a health psychology professor at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, used the Fibrolleida conference for World Day of Central Sensitization Syndromes to argue that chronic pain in children is being underestimated. He put the local figure for severe cases at roughly 5% of minors and said these cases are often linked to disease or injury rather than ordinary aches. The event also included doctor Felipe Infiesta and Fibrolleida president Carme Fabregat, who both pushed for more health resources and shorter waits. (segre.com) ### What counts as chronic pain here? The threshold Miró described is pain lasting more than 3 months. He split it into two broad buckets — milder chronic pain that functions as a condition itself, like headaches or back pain, and more severe pain tied to another illness, including cancer-related pain. That distinction matters because the severe group is smaller, but it is also the group more likely to come with disability and heavier medical needs. (segre.com) ### How big is the problem? The headline number is the 5% severe-pain estimate, but the wider picture is bigger. Miró said more than 45% of children and adolescents between 8 and 18 experience some kind of mild chronic pain, including headaches and pain associated with growth. For Lleida province, he translated the severe share into about 2,725 minors. That is why he called it a “silent epidemic” — not because every case is catastrophic, but because a lot of pain never gets treated like a serious pediatric condition. (segre.com) ### Is that number unusually high? Not really — and that is the unsettling part. Broader pediatric pain research already treats chronic pain as common in childhood. Community studies place prevalence across different pain types in a wide 11% to 38% range, and some Catalan research tied to Miró’s own group has put persistent pain in children and adolescents near 46%. The Lleida figures sit inside that broader pattern, especially once mild headaches and musculoskeletal pain are included. (segre.com) ### Why does severe pain matter more than “growing pains”? Because the real damage is not just the pain score. Pediatric psychology groups flag that about 5% to 10% of young people have chronic pain with major functional impact — less school attendance, worse sleep, less activity, more anxiety and depression, and strain on the whole family. In other words, the severe group is the one most likely to need coordinated care, not just reassurance or another prescription. (pedpsych.org) ### So what is missing? Miró’s sharpest point was about services. He said there is not a single specialized program for treating pediatric chronic pain, even though adult programs do exist. That lines up with the broader field, where experts have argued for multidisciplinary pediatric pain programs inside public health systems — teams that combine medicine, psychology, rehab, and family support instead of relying on drugs alone. (pedpsych.org) ### Why push this now? Because once chronic pain gets entrenched in childhood, it can persist into adulthood or turn into new pain problems later. The earlier the intervention, the better the odds of preventing school disruption, social withdrawal, and long-term disability. Lleida’s warning is local, but the message is wider — children’s chronic pain is common, consequential, and still underbuilt as a health service. (segre.com) ### Bottom line? The news in Lleida is not just that thousands of minors may be living with chronic pain. It is that specialists are now saying the health system is still organized as if this were mostly an adult problem. (segre.com) (pedpsych.org)