Word: anesthesia
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When it comes to treating pain in children, the medical profession has a checkered history. Until the 1970s, the mistaken idea that babies do not feel pain was widely accepted, and infants undergoing major surgery were often given little or no anesthesia, just drugs to paralyze them temporarily. "The reluctance to use anesthesia was not due to doctors' being mean and nasty," Berde says. "There were real risks. It was an era when some babies did die from anesthesia, especially the ones who were very sick. So if you didn't know how to anesthetize them safely, it was easier...
...longer-lasting, more widespread pain that is likely to affect their behavior later in life. Pain unleashes a destructive cascade of stress hormones that can weaken the immune system and make the heart rate and blood pressure soar. Studies in the 1970s and '80s showed that babies deprived of anesthesia during surgery were more likely to develop infections, brain hemorrhages, muscle wasting and difficulties in healing...
Those findings, combined with advances that have greatly reduced the risks from anesthesia during the past 10 to 15 years, have brought about some substantial changes. "Now no newborn is too sick to get pain medication," Berde says. In general, there seems to be more effort to reduce kids' pain from all medical procedures, including bone-marrow biopsies, spinal taps and repeated blood drawings. Says Berde: "I think most major children's hospitals are changing. There is less willingness than there used to be to hold kids down and brutalize them...
...specifically because they have had bad experiences with pain control in other hospitals. In addition, not enough research is being done on pain medication for children because, Berde believes, drug companies do not think children are a large enough market. Too many babies are still being circumcised without anesthesia, in Berde's opinion; he thinks that at the very least a numbing cream should be used but that general anesthetics and nerve blocks are more effective. "You couldn't go into an animal lab and do a procedure like that without anesthesia," he says...
Donation involves the extraction of bone marrow from the hip while the patient is under general or local anesthesia. Donors can go home after a few hours or rest in the hospital overnight. In a healthy individual, the body replaces the lost marrow, leaving no permanent damage...