PHARMACOLOGICAL PAIN RELIEF IN PEDIATRIC PATIENTS

Pain has been defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain Subcommittee on Taxonomy1 as ‘an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience connected with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”. It is suggested that pain is always subjective. Each individual learns the application of the word through experiences related to injury in early life. Thus in the definition of pain are two components – a neurophysiologically determined sensory component and an emotional one based on the affective state. Pain has afflicted, affectedand fascinated generations of human beings over the ages. There have been many misconceptions about its meaning and many different approaches. Thomas Jefferson in 1786 wrote, ‘The art of life is the avoiding of pain’. Perhaps no age group is more ill equipped to avoid pain than infants and children.