Paediatric anaesthesia
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Paediatric anaesthesia · Jan 1996
Postoperative pain in children: a survey of parents' expectations and perceptions of their children's experiences.
Parental expectation and participation in postoperative analgesia is very important in paediatric practice. In order to improve postoperative pain management in children, the parents of 31 elective surgical children, three months to 15 years of age, were asked preoperatively about their expectations regarding their children's postoperative pain and pain relief. At 24 h after surgery, the parents were asked about their perceptions of their children's pain and pain control. ⋯ Nine (29%) of the children experienced severe or unbearable pain or experienced pain for the whole of the 24 h after surgery. An approach to improve pain management in children could be for the hospital staff to reorganize and to develop an 'acute pain service'. A pain service may not require new technology, but instead be based on more effective communication and skill in utilizing the traditional systems.
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Paediatric anaesthesia · Jan 1996
Left ventricular functions are not impaired after lumbar epidural anaesthesia in young children.
We studied the haemodynamic and cardiovascular effects of epidural anaesthesia with plain bupivacaine 0.75 ml.kg-1 in 13 unpremedicated ASA 1 children using measurements of heart rate, blood pressure and M-mode echocardiography. Under general anaesthesia, M-mode echocardiographic evaluation of left ventricular function in each patient was performed at four points (after general anaesthesia, point A; 5 min, 10 min and 25 min after epidural anaesthesia, point B; point C; and point D, respectively). ⋯ No other M-mode cardiographic indices were changed at any point. Epidural anaesthesia using 0.25% bupivacaine 0.75 ml.kg-1 did not affect LV function in young children.