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Query: UMLS:C0184567 (acute pain)
 3,962 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The history of pain treatment likely started in the cradle of mankind, as the experience of pain from many causes presumably had an aversive dimension comparable in its ranking to elementary sensations and motivations such as hunger, thirst, maintenance of body temperature, and sexuality-all vital for individual and genetic survival. Thus, pain certainly was among the drives to create social behavior and medicine-these functions still are inherent in pain. The period of history from 1500, as considered here, is dominated by the emergence of science. The exploration of the inside of the human body found the brain to be the seat of sensations, emotions, and behavior, and this progress included pain as well, slowly disabusing it from the magic elements and demons still inherent from early times. The rational phase of medicine began and also included new concepts of pain as first conceived by Descartes. The treatment and prevention of pain became a strong motive of medicine, with new approaches in drug treatment, physical applications such as electricity, and discoveries of psychosocial implementations. During the nineteenth century the most important breakthroughs in pain treatment included general and local anesthesia as well as analgesic drugs from morphine to anti-inflammatory agents. They succeeded in taking the terror out of the agonizing pain of surgery and dramatic courses of diseases. Today's natural extension of the medical success in controlling acute pain may be seen in the period of pain medicine aimed at understanding and preventing chronic pain.
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PMID:[History of pain treatment from 1500 to 1900]. 1765 13

Several pain scales are available for newborns, but the assessment of pain in these preverbal beings, who are in continuing neurological development, remains challenging for healthcare teams. Although neonates at the end of life are particularly vulnerable to pain and discomfort, no assessment tool has been validated in this specific population. The difficulties for assessing pain in this context are copies of those potentially encountered in other situations. Questions arise about the limits of the available scales, about possible alterations of responses to a noxious stimulus in particular contexts (extreme immaturity, brain lesions), about possibly painful situations in palliative care, about the nature of scales to choose. Data show a perception of pain at a cortical level by extremely immature infants and the ability for neonates with significant neurological injury to express pain behaviours. For some potentially painful situations (dyspnoea, gasps, hunger) neonatal data are virtually nonexistent. Fundamental scientific data and clinical data from adults and children can give some answers. One will choose scales for which the staff is trained, easily usable (preference for behavioural scales), validated for all gestational ages, reliable in the event of neurological impairment or sedation. An assessment of prolonged pain (EDIN scale or COMFORT Behaviour scale) combined with measures of acute pain (DAN or NFCS scales) is recommended. These scales should be better validated for populations of newborns and situations that are specific to palliative care. A better assessment of the parental perception and of their distress about the discomfort or pain of their child is warranted.
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PMID:[Problems for assessing the newborns' pain in palliative care]. 2072 11