Abstracts of Papers

s of the Australian Pain Society Conference, 12-16 June 2011, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Missing in action? Dissemination via social media by painfocussed and general medical journals H. G. Allen, J. H. McAuley, G.L. Moseley. Body in Mind Research Group, Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, New South Wales and Sansom Institute of Health Research, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. Background and aims: The application of evidence-based medicine to clinical practice obligates us to keep up to date with research progress. Journals are the most important means of dissemination, but rely on their audience ‘pulling’ relevant findings from the wider pool of literature. The role of social media in connecting information to users is rapidly expanding and presents an opportunity for journals to ‘push’ the relevant findings to their audience in a targeted and time-efficient manner. Are journals taking this opportunity? The aim of this study was to determine the use of social media by journals and to compare the top pain-focused and general medical journals. Methods: The top 10 general medical and the top six painfocused journals were selected according to their impact factor as provided by ISI Web of Science. Presence of a blog, Facebook and Twitter streams was determined by Google search as well as searching on journal websites, Facebook and Twitter. For journals that were represented in the social media, we assessed presence (on Twitter, Facebook and whether the journal had a blog), participation (number of entries over one month) and influence (Hubspot Grader measure of social media influence). Results: Several high-impact general medical journals had a strong social media presence with at least twice-weekly blog entries, Twitter and Facebook posts, which is consistent with successful mainstream media sites such as the New York Times Health Blog Well. Hubspot influence ranged from 17 to 100. In contrast, pain-focused journals (Pain, Molecular Pain, Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, Journal of Pain, European Journal of Pain, Clinical Journal of Pain) had no social media presence. Conclusions: The top general medical journals use social media to disseminate their content. By so doing, they push their information to thousands of audience members each week. In contrast, pain-focused journals have no social media presence and as such miss out on this opportunity. The impact of social mediabased dissemination on clinical practice remains to be investigated, but these preliminary data suggest that social media could be better used to disseminate new findings in the pain sciences. Demographics and pain characteristics of patients attending a paediatric pain clinic in Melbourne, Australia L. Brooke, G. A. Chalkiadis. The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Background and aims: Chronic pain is a relatively common occurrence in childhood, yet publications describing paediatric chronic pain in Australian populations are few. The aim of this study was to describe the demographics and pain characteristics of paediatric patients attending a multi-disciplinary chronic pain clinic at a tertiary facility in Melbourne, Australia. Methods: Two hundred new patients attending the Children’s Pain Management Clinic (CPMC) at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne completed the demographic component of the Child Health Questionnaire at the time of their first appointment. Retrospective file audits provided information regarding the child’s presenting problem, comorbid medical conditions and any contributing psychosocial factors that were indentified by the referrer. Results: Eighty percent of the sample was female with a mean age of 14.0 years (range 5.9 to 18.7 years). The average age of male patients was 12.1 years (7.3 to 15.8 years). The most common presenting complaint was headache or migraine (31.6%), abdominal pain (21.7%) and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (types I or II; 15.3%). Males were most likely to present with headache or migraine (54.5%), whereas females were more equally distributed with headache and migraine (25.3%), abdominal pain (22.3%) and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (17.9%). Of the sample, 38.4% presented with more than one chronic pain complaint and 30% of those patients presented with three or more complaints. Psychosocial stressors had been identified in 40.5% of the sample at the time of referral, the most common being bullying, parental separation and other family members with chronic ill health or mental health disorder: 39.7% presented with concomitant medical conditions the most common being mental health disorder (most commonly mood, anxiety and eating disorders), arthritis and scoliosis. Forty percent of parents or carers reported their own health condition, the most common being depression, headaches or migraines, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and back problems. Bivariate correlations revealed that the number of chronic pain complaints was positively associated with number of concomitant medical conditions (r=0.22, P <0.01) but not the number of psychosocial stressors (r=-0.03, P >0.05), nor the parent’s rating of their own health (r=-0.04, P >0.05). Increasing age was associated with the number concomitant medical conditions (r=0.35, P <0.01), the number of psychosocial stressors (r=0.33, P <0.01), but not the number of chronic pain complaints (r=0.05, P >0.05). Conclusion: The current findings are comparable to previous research as they suggest paediatric chronic pain presentations are multifaceted and occur in complex family contexts. However some interesting gender differences in the chronic pain characteristics of these patients emerged that, to our knowledge, are novel. Limitations, comparisons to the existing literature, theoretical implications and future research questions are presented for discussion.