Pain Management in Children

Until the 1980s, it was a widely held belief that premature infants and newborns did not feel pain. In the decades since, research supports that these patients do, in fact, feel painPain and moreover that there are deleterious effects of poorly controlled or untreated pain in patients from newborn to adolescence. Pain assessmentPain assessment and treatment in the pediatricPediatrics population is complicated by changes in mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical development and physiology that vary with age. This chapter broadly covers considerations and techniques for assessing and treating pediatricPediatrics pain, while highlighting differences in the pediatricPediatrics population compared to adults.