Postoperative pain is still a major complication causing discomfort and significant suffering, especially for children. Therefore, every effort should be made to prevent pain and treat it effectively once it arises. Under-treatment of pediatric pain is often due to a lack of both knowledge about age-specific aspects of physiology and pharmacology and routine pain assessment. Factors for long term success require regularly assessing pain, as routinely as the other vital signs together with documentation of side effects. The fear of side effects mostly prevents the adequate usage of analgesics. Essential is selecting and establishing a simple concept for clinical routine involving a combination of non-pharmacological treatment strategies, non-opioid drugs, opioids and regional anesthesia.

The two 1% propofol formulations were equally effective in our patient population of infants and young children between 1 month and 3 years of age. No differences between the two propofol formulations were found with regard to the circulatory reaction, lipid metabolism, dosages, and recovery profile in the studied age groups.

This study provides S-100B reference ranges for pediatric patients based on the largest group of healthy pediatric patients yet analyzed.

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Propofol-based short-term anesthesia was well suited for anesthesia during MRI procedures in the studied pediatric patients. There were no clinically relevant differences between the two propofol formulations.