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Pediatric Pain Management

It’s never easy for a parent to help a child through an illness, injury or surgery. But when your child is in pain, that’s even more difficult to deal with. Fortunately, the team at Banner Children’s is dedicated to eliminating pain as much as possible in our young patients through the use of medication and integrative therapies.

What Is Pediatric Pain Management?

Pediatric pain management treats acute or chronic pain that may occur with your child through medication and therapy. We know each child reacts differently when scared or hurting. Some children become quiet, while others cry and complain. That’s why we provide you and your family with many tools so we can best understand how your child is feeling.

Depending on the child’s age, we may look at how they are holding their face and body, ask them to look at pictures of faces that change from smiling to crying or have them talk about their pain on a scale from 0 to 10.

Our team uses both pharmacologic (drug therapy) and integrative therapy to help your child have the most comfortable, pain-free hospital stay possible.

Pediatric Pain Management Therapy Options

Our team will assess the pain with your child to determine the best treatment option. Treatment options for pain management in pediatric patients can include pharmacologic therapy or integrative therapy.

What Are Pharmacologic Therapies?

Pharmacologic therapies involve treating pain through medication. We can deliver pain medication in a variety of ways, including:

  • Orally (by mouth)
  • Intravenously (IV), through a needle
  • Through a catheter in the back
  • Through a patch placed on the skin

Some of the many medicines we use to control your child’s pain include:

  • Acetaminophen, ibuprofen and other mild pain relievers
  • Analgesics (such as morphine and oxycodone)
  • General anesthesia (for surgery)
  • Local anesthesia to numb a specific area of the body
  • Pain relievers for nerve pain
  • Sedatives
  • Steroids

What Are Integrative Therapies?

Integrative therapies, also known as complementary medicine, are non-traditional treatments. Integrative therapies focus on alternative ways to reduce pain and treat the whole person, not just a specific illness, at the same time.

Some of the integrative therapies we use at Banner Children’s include:

Our team will work with you to find the right treatment — pharmacological, integrative therapies or both — to make sure your child recovers quickly, safely and with as little pain as possible.