Analgesia for infant patients has previously been a much neglected area of overall management. Increased catabolism as a result of the pain response can contribute to post-operative morbidity and mortality. Even premature babies have established physiological mechanisms to respond to insults.
Conversely, the assessment of pain in the infant is highly problematic:
The compromise is an assessment based on the subjective measures of behaviour, e.g. quality of cry and expression, and the severity of the pain stimulus, e.g. an extrapolation to a similar situation in an older child.
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