The Ethics of Pain Management in the Pediatric Population

Authors

  • Adelaide Pinto-Coelho Interno de Anestesiologia, Serviço de Anestesiologia, Hospital do Divino Espírito Santo, Ponta Delgada, Portugal
  • Hugo Trindade Assistente Hospitalar de Anestesiologia, Serviço de Anestesiologia, Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Central, Lisboa, Portugal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25751/rspa.13064

Keywords:

Child, Ethics, Medical, Off-Label Use, Pain Management/ethics, Pediatrics/ethics

Abstract

The prescription of off label analgesic medications in pediatric age is a constant reality in modern healthcare. Off label prescription happens when a drug is used beyond the product licensing according to its indications, age group, weight, frequency, presentation or route of administration. 

Due to ethical issues, clinical trials in pediatric population are controversial. Consequently many drugs used in Pediatrics are not sufficiently tested for efficiency and safety.

An ethical dilemma arises, for it is the doctor’s duty to effectively treat children’s pain, even if that means off label prescription of analgesics.

In this review paper we address the issue of off label drug use for pain control in the pediatric population.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2018-03-30

How to Cite

Pinto-Coelho, A., & Trindade, H. (2018). The Ethics of Pain Management in the Pediatric Population. Journal of the Portuguese Society of Anesthesiology, 27(1), 55–58. https://doi.org/10.25751/rspa.13064

Issue

Vol. 27 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Continuing Medical Education Article

License

Articles are freely available to be read, downloaded and shared from the time of publication.

The RSPA reserves the right to commercialize the article as an integral part of the journal (in the preparation of reprints, for example). The author should accompany the submission letter with a declaration of copyright transfer for commercial purposes.

Articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC BY-NC).

After publication in RSPA, authors are allowed to make their articles available in repositories of their home institutions, as long as they always mention where they were published.

Most read articles by the same author(s)