Analgesia in the palliative care of children

Abstract

Due to the increasing incidence of terminal illnesses in children, there is great urgency within pediatric medicine to give these patients the best palliative care possible. The main focus of palliative care is to alleviate suffering resulting from the psychophysical condition of the child, which is mostly due to physical pain. The first phase of managing pain in palliative care is quantifying and qualifying pain levels, although this is sometimes difficult to do with pediatric patients. In addition to implementing strategies that alleviate or remove pain for patients, it is also crucial to give patients and their families a feeling of full control over pain. In practice, non-pharmacological and pharmacological methods of analgesia are present. Pharmacological methods include non-opioid and opioid analgesics, followed by co-analgesics as well as methods of regional anesthesia. In order to give these patients the best care possible, it is necessary that the approach be individual, multimodal, multidisciplinary, and considerate of every detail.