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Improving the treatment of infant pain

Fiona Moultrie1, Rebeccah Slater, Caroline Hartley

  • 1Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

Current Opinion in Supportive and Palliative Care
|April 5, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Managing pain in newborns undergoing medical procedures is challenging. New objective measures of infant pain are emerging, aiding clinical trials for better analgesic treatments.

Area of Science:

  • Neonatal care
  • Neuroscience
  • Pharmacology

Background:

  • Pain management in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) is complex.
  • Infants undergoing invasive procedures face risks during critical neurodevelopment.
  • Inconsistent and insufficient analgesic provision stems from limited evidence on drug efficacy and safety.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review advances in measuring infant pain.
  • To discuss clinical trials evaluating pharmacological analgesia in infants.

Main Methods:

  • Review of recent advancements in objective infant pain measurement.
  • Analysis of clinical trial data on analgesic efficacy and safety in neonates.

Main Results:

  • Novel measures of noxious-evoked brain activity offer objective, quantitative outcomes for trials.
  • These brain activity measures are sensitive to analgesic effects.

Conclusions:

  • A multimodal approach is essential for identifying effective and safe infant analgesics.
  • Well-designed clinical trials are crucial for improving pain management in neonates.
  • Objective pain measures enhance the reliability of clinical trials for infant analgesia.
Abstract

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