Society for Pediatric Pain Medicine
Better Care for Children in Pain

A newly published study in Pediatric Anesthesia sought to examine if there were disparities in perioperative pain management following routine pediatric tonsillectomy. In contrast to existing literature, they found that ethnicity was NOT associated with the likelihood of receiving opioid analgesia nor difference in mean morphine equivalence given, although they did find that Hispanic/Latino identifying patients had less formal pain assessments. 

Full study here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/pan.15048

US Pain Foundation has released a booklet entitled  “Living Well With Chronic Pain: For Teens” available as both print copy or digital booklet.

Follow this link as a useful resource for your adolescent patients living with pain: https://uspainfoundation.org/resources/living-well-with-chronic-pain-for-teens/

The Society for Pediatric Anesthesia Quality and Safety Committee developed the Pediatric Regional Anesthesia Time-Out Checklist, consisting of 14 safety items intended to be reviewed by an anesthesia team prior to a regional anesthetic.

Full paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/pan.15069

 

Congratulations to several SPPM members who recently published in Anesthesia and Analgesia on trends in management of acute pain for idiopathic scoliosis in the pediatric population. Notably, the study found 24% incidence of chronic postsurgical pain.

Read the full study here: https://journals.lww.com/anesthesia-analgesia/fulltext/9900/multi_institutional_study_of_multimodal_analgesia.1093.aspx

One center published their results with the addition of lidocaine infusions to treat acute sickle cell pain with positive results and patients requesting infusions in subsequent admissions. Promising results that would benefit from future studies!

Full study here:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pbc.31458