Good news for Spanish neonates!

Abstract

There is no longer any doubt that sick new-born, and in particular premature-born, infants suffer immediate, but also long-term negative effects as a result of the pain and stress they experience during their hospital stay. It was first shown by Anand and Hickey in the late the 1980s that the outcome after cardiac surgery performed on new-borns was much improved if an opioid was added to the traditional anaesthesia with muscle-relaxant and nitrous oxide alone. This led to an awareness of the necessity to treat and prevent pain in new-borns in order to avoid medical complications, and also to a great number of studies in the subject of neonatal pain. From this early research stems the knowledge of the acute consequences of untreated pain in new-born infants, namely cardiorespiratory, hormonal and metabolic changes, which are increasing the risk of cerebral haemorrhage and postoperative morbidity. Subsequent research in the following years also suggested that untreated neonatal pain could have long-term effects such as affected perception and processing of pain in these individuals, both in toddlerand child-years but also later in life, as adolescents and grown-ups. For instance, boys who where circumcised showed more pain at vaccination 4--6 month later, and preterm born adolescents had more ‘‘tender-points’’ and lower pain threshold than their fullterm peers. A recent review by Valeri et al. analysed 13 studies about long-term effects of neonatal pain. In infants