Painful Procedures

In the last 10 years, as the number of nonoperative diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for children have grown, pediatric caregivers have been searching for ways to make these procedures more acceptable to children and their parents. The increasing use of sedatives and analgesics for children grew out of the popularity of the use of minimal sedation (anxiolysis) in adults to make invasive procedures more comfortable and less stressful. The development of pediatric sedation services and institutional sedation protocols has increased both the safety and availability of sedation and analgesia for children undergoing a number of painful procedures.^55,56