You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 103, Issue 1
  • Fifteen-minute consultation: Pain relief for children made simple—a pragmatic approach to prescribing oral analgesia in the postcodeine era

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Best practice
Fifteen-minute consultation: Pain relief for children made simple—a pragmatic approach to prescribing oral analgesia in the postcodeine era
  1. David G Mason
  1. Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr David G Mason, Consultant Paediatric Anaesthetist, Clinical Lead for Children’s Inpatient Pain Management Service, Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Headington OX3 9DU, Oxford, UK; david.mason{at}nda.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

What are the most effective doses of simple oral analgesics such as paracetamol and ibuprofen for pain relief in children? Why can’t I prescribe codeine phosphate for children anymore? Is oral morphine really a safe alternative to codeine phosphate, and if so what dose should I prescribe? These questions are frequently asked by clinicians who wish to give analgesics to children for pain relief. In this article I will address these questions and describe a pragmatic approach for pain relief using oral analgesics based on the best evidence available and my experience as a consultant paediatric anaesthetist.

  • analgesia
  • paediatric practice

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2016-311613

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributor None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Correction notice This paper has been amended since it was published Online First. In the box titled ‘Answers to the multiple choice questions’,1B, line 5. ‘A dose 15 mg/kg sixtimes a day is well below the likely hepatotoxic dose of75mg/kg/day’. The six should be four. This has now been corrected.