There is no nobler goal than achieving the relief of pain and suffering. —Ronald Melzack Pain is one of the most common symptoms experienced by children receiving palliative care and one of the most feared by children and their families.…
Progress in understanding the causes of pediatric cancer, as well as advances in cancer-directed therapies, hold great promise for curing and extending the lives of many children diagnosed with cancer. However, as advances in medicine and technology improve the survival…
SUMMARY In this chapter we outline approaches to pain and symptom management, supportive care, and palliative care for children with life-threatening illnesses. Much of the literature on palliative care in adults and children concerns cancer; we focus in large measure…
the practice of pain management in children continues to advance. Since the early 1980s, clinicians have recognized that neonates and infants experience pain and process those learning experiences. Research has demonstrated long-term adverse consequences of unrelieved pain, including harmful neuroendocrine…
Local anesthesia can be defined as loss of sensation in a discrete region of the body caused by disruption of nerve impulse generation or propagation. Local anesthesia can be produced by various chemical and physical means. However, in routine clinical…
Key Points ▪ Local anesthetics block voltage-gated sodium channels and thereby interrupt initiation and propagation of impulses in axons, but they have a wide variety of other biologic actions, desirable and undesirable. ▪ Currently available local anesthetics are of two…