When you send pediatric patients home after surgery, it becomes their parents' job to keep their post-op pain in check. But a significant portion of those parents may not be following doctors' orders for administering pain medications to their children, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.
Researchers from the University of California at Irvine and the Children's Hospital of Orange County, Calif., assessed post-op pain in 261 patients aged 2 to 12 who had undergone either tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy. During the first day at home after surgery, about one-quarter of the children received either no pain medication or just 1 dose, even though 86% of parents reported that their children experienced "significant overall pain,"¯according to the study. Two-thirds of the children still experienced significant pain on the third day after surgery, but 41% received zero or minimal pain medication by that point.
About three-quarters of the more than 5 million American children who undergo these common surgeries each year feel significant pain afterwards, the authors note. They speculate that parents may hold back on post-op pain meds because they fear their children will become addicted, do not understand how much pain their children are in or believe "analgesics should be used only as a last resort."
"Optimal pain management after surgery is achieved by providing round-the-clock analgesic treatment to prevent pain recurrence," the authors conclude, noting that while hospital treatment of pediatric post-op pain has improved, at-home care has not. They recommend that researchers "focus on the translation of knowledge to target children's pain management at home."
Irene Tsikitas
