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Review
. 2023 Aug 3;94(4):e2023174.
doi: 10.23750/abm.v94i4.14289.

Pain management in pediatric age. An update

Lorenzo Di Sarno  1 , Antonio Gatto  2 , David Korn  3 , Valeria Pansini  4 , Antonietta Curatola  5 , Serena Ferretti  6 , Lavinia Capossela  7 , Benedetta Graglia  8 , Antonio Chiaretti  9
Affiliations
Review

Pain management in pediatric age. An update

Lorenzo Di Sarno et al. Acta Biomed. .

Abstract

Differently from the adult patients, in paediatric age it is more difficult to assess and treat efficaciously the pain and often this symptom is undertreated or not treated. In children, a selection of appropriate pain assessment tools should consider the age, the cognitive level, the presence of eventual disability, the type of pain and the situation in which it is occurring. Improved understanding of developmental neurobiology and paediatric analgesic drug pharmacokinetics should facilitate a better management of childhood pain. The objective of this update is to discuss the current practice and the recent advances in pediatric pain management. Using PubMed and the Cochrane Library we conducted an extensive literature analysis on pediatric pain assessment and commonly used analgesic agents in this kind of patients. According to our results, a multimodal analgesic regimen provides a better pain control and a functional outcome in children. Cooperation and communication among the anaesthesiologist, the surgeon and the paediatrician remains essential for successful anaesthesia and pain management in childhood.

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Conflict of interest statement

Each author declares that he or she has no commercial associations that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The detailed selection of literature.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) – It consists of a segment of a straight line (generally 10 cm long), the ends of which normally correspond to the indications “no pain” and “the worst possible pain”.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Wong-Baker Faces pain rating scale.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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