Treating children in an intensive care unit aims at the reversal of physiologic derangement of their organism while caring for comfortable physical and psychological environment. Any correctable environmental and physical factors causing discomfort should be addressed before the introduction of effective analgesia and sedation by pharmacological means; a normal schedule for sleep is desirable, and attention should be paid to the provision of feeding and hydration, lighting, environmental noise and the temporal orientation of the patients.
Continue readingIn the field of paediatric critical care, there is considerable uncertainty and variation in the area of analgesia and sedation in critically ill children. Consensus guidelines on sedation and analgesia in critically ill children are available since 2006, although clinical practice reveals variations both in pharmacological agents and regimens used.
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