Help My Hurt

Yes - infants do have pain and we need to learn how to gauge it

by Marijke Durning, RN on June 24th, 2008

Not all that long ago, painful procedures like circumcisions were done without anesthetic. It was felt, after all, that infants didn’t feel pain. And - even if they did - how much of it could they remember?

As parents, this idea is horrifying; purposely exposing our vulnerable infants to pain, no matter how short term. Thankfully, medicine finally clued in to the fact that these little guys *do* feel pain and that it needs to be managed. It’s been noticed that children who experienced a lot of pain as infants have higher rates of difficulties down the road, including suspected higher rates of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

Now that we know that, there is a push on to better measure the amount of pain infants may be experiencing. In this article, Researchers Say Current Methods to Determine Infant Pain May Be Inadequate, the author describes how “infants may process pain at the brain level without producing detectable behavioral changes. The lack of a grimace or similar facial expression may be due to immature muscle responses, or it truly could be an absence of emotion.”

Let’s hope they find a good way soon.

Image: iStock

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POSTED IN: Acute pain, Children, News