[Need of analgetics in children aged 2-12 years after tonsil surgery]

Tonsil surgery is one of the most painful operations in childhood. The Children's and Infants' Postoperative Pain Scale (CHIPPS), the Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) and the little-known German version of the parents' postoperative pain measure (PPPM-D) are age-appropriate measures. Children undergoing intracapsular tonsillectomy (TO) or extracapsular tonsillectomy (TE) received the non-opioids ibuprofen (IBU) and paracetamol (PCM) on a "as needed"-basis requested by parents. A pain service checked pain scales and applied piritramide as rescue medication (RM) if required. Objective was evalution of sufficient analgesia. Endpoints were number of patients (PAT) needing the RM, doses of requested non-opioids, consistency of indications in different pain scales and correlation between pain and efficacy of the premedication or duration of the intervention.

3 measures were carried out daily: CHIPPS for PAT ≤ 4 years old, FPS-R from the age of 5. Parents completed the PPPM-D. Exceeding a cut-off score of 4 in CHIPPS or FPS-R or 6 in PPPM-D was rated as indication for RM.

We included 68 PAT in an interim analysis. Mean daily doses of non-opioids within the first 3 postoperative days were as follows: PAT undergoing TE got 14,1-16,3 mg/Kg IBU and 4,2-12,4 mg/Kg PCM. PAT undergoing TO got 10,8-14,7 mg/Kg IBU and 5,2-8,8 mg/Kg PCM. On 212 visits PAT required RM, but 121 times it was detected in the PPPM-D only. After exclusion of potentially false-positive results remained 67 % PAT after TE and 48 % PAT after TO with at least 1 indication for RM. The study was terminated due to the high need for RM.

The need of non-opioids was underrated. Combining the PPPM-D with established measures may improve the postoperative pain therapy.