O the last several decades, there has been an increased awareness of the importance of assessing and managing pain in hospitalized newborns. One only has to spend time in the NICU to observe how frequently newborns encounter postoperative, procedural, and disease-related pain throughout their hospital stay. Although neonates cannot specifically communicate pain, they do display physiologic and ...

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG) have recently provided fundamental new information about how the newborn brain processes innocuous and noxious somatosensory information. However, results derived independently from these two techniques are not entirely consistent, raising questions about the relationship between hemodynamic and electrophysiological responses in...

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG) have recently provided fundamental new information about how the newborn brain processes innocuous and noxious somatosensory information. However, results derived independently from these two techniques are not entirely consistent, raising questions about the relationship between hemodynamic and electrophysiological responses in...

BACKGROUND Heel prick blood sampling is a commonly performed and painful procedure in the newborn infant. Use of a topical local anaesthetic does not relieve this pain. A 4% w/w amethocaine gel (Ametop) reduces the pain of venepuncture in the newborn but has not been tried with heel pricks. AIM To investigate the effect of topical amethocaine gel on the pain of heel prick in the newborn infan...

In 1953, Virginia Apgar published the article "A Proposal for a New Method for Evaluation of the Newborn Infant" about her method for scoring newborn infants directly after birth to assess their health and whether medical intervention was necessary. Apgar worked at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, New York, as an obstetrical anesthesiologist, a physician who administers pain medicati...

a 39-year-old pregnant woman at 38 weeks of gestation was referred with labor pain to a hospital. she had consanguinity with her husband. a female newborn had multiple craniofacial anomalies and phocomelia in right upper limb. the disease locus was assigned to chromosome17q21. four days later, infant died of cardiopulmonary arrest.

The traditional view that neonates do not feel pain is now being questioned. Early studies showed what was thought to be a decorticate response in babies with no localisation to painful stimuli and this, together with the belief that the painful experience was not remembered, implied that pain was unimportant. ' As a consequence and because of certain anxieties about the handling of drugs (part...

BACKGROUND Topical amethocaine provides effective pain relief during venepuncture in children, and has been shown to have a local anaesthetic action in the newborn. AIM To investigate the effect of topical amethocaine on the pain of venepuncture in the newborn. DESIGN Randomised double blind placebo controlled trial. SUBJECTS Forty newborn infants, gestation 27-41 weeks (median 33), age 2...