Anesthesia or Sedation of Newborns in Intensive Care: How to Determine the Optimal Way?

Abstract

During their stay in the intensive care unit, newborns are subjected to an enormous number of painful procedures and operations. Poorly treated pain during the newborn period can lead to negative remote effects such as cognitive dysfunction, the formation of chronic pain. Therefore, every day reanimatologists accept the challenge to evaluate the pain adequately and to choose right analgesia tactics. The literature review represents the analysis of 87 literary sources over the past 10 years. This article covers the results of multicenter studies and clinical recommendations. It has been determined that optimal treatment of pain and anxiety in newborns requires a multimodal approach, always including non-medication strategies and directed primarily to analgesia. Placing on the chest and breastfeeding, sucking reflex, «skin to skin» contact, «kangaroo» care, swaddling – all these aspects of childcare are effective to reduce physiological and behavioural response to pain in invasive procedures, and also have sedative effect. Every manipulation requires a mandatory analgesic. The choice of the method of anesthesia depends on the invasiveness of the procedure, gestational age and the severity of the condition of the child. It is advisable to combine various non-medication analgesic methods for mild pain, to add medication methods for moderate and severe pain to achieve better therapeutic effect. Neonates who are on prolonged ventilation cannot avoid sedation. However, sedation can be achieved by a combination of non-medication methods and sedatives. In order to prevent tachyphylaxis, analgesics should be rotated, and combinations of opiates with non-narcotic analgesics and adjuvant analgesics should be used. The multimodal approach to pain treatment has the benefits of reducing the dosage of any single drug and mitigating the overall risk of side effects. Acetaminophen, fentanyl or morphine in combination with midazolam are the safest medicines for use in newborns, despite the side effects.