Pain behavior of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities coded with the new PAIC-15 and validation of its Arabic translation

Pain management necessitates assessment of pain; the gold standard being self-report. Among individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), self-report may be limited and therefore indirect methods for pain assessment are required. A new, internationally agreed upon and user-friendly observational tool was recently published—the Pain Assessment in Impaired Cognition (PAIC-15). The current study’s aims were: to test the use of the PAIC-15 in assessing pain among people with IDD and to translate the PAIC-15 into Arabic for dissemination among Arabic-speaking professionals. Pain behavior following experimental pressure stimuli was analyzed among 30 individuals with IDD and 15 typically developing controls (TDCs). Translation of the PAIC followed the forward–backward approach; and reliability between the two versions and between raters was calculated. Observational scores with the PAIC-15 exhibited a stimulus–response relationship with pressure stimulation. Those of the IDD group were greater than those of the TDC group. The overall agreement between the English and Arabic versions was high (ICC = 0.89); single items exhibited moderate to high agreement levels. Inter-rater reliability was high (ICC = 0.92). Both versions of the PAIC-15 are feasible and reliable tools to record pain behavior in individuals with IDD. Future studies using these tools in clinical settings are warranted