Should we assess pain in newborn infants using a scoring system or just a detection method?

Abstract

Newborn infants' pain should be scored indirectly using dedicated pain scales. Unfortunately, while some scales for prolonged pain have given good results, a gold standard to assess acute pain does not exist. Acute pain scales still have weak points, most are complex and are scarcely used in neonatal departments. Moreover, carefully scoring pain in clinical practice seems redundant, because any avoidable pain is a concern. This suggests that researchers must find new ways to assess acute pain. A possible approach is to settle for pain detection instead of pain scoring in selected cases. Here, we describe a two-point method that illustrates this approach. For everyday practice, detecting pain is more useful than scoring it; acute pain scales should be reserved for research, for those clinical settings where the personnel has received a careful training and where overcrowding and hurry are absent.