Pain indicators in newborns

DEFINITION OF PAIN: The International Association for the Study of Pain has defined pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage." The interpretation of pain is subjective. Each person forms an internal construct of pain through encountered injury. PAIN AND NEWBORN: The issue of pain perception in newborns, its management and prevention has been neglected for decades. The inability of "self-report" of painful experience has contributed significantly to misunderstanding of the importance of this problem and inadequate treatment. The main characteristic of this 'critical window of brain development' period is rapid enlargement of brain volume and its great plasticity. Harmful short-term and long-term consequences can arise as a consequence of disturbance of the sophisticated balance between newborn and its surrounding. NEONATAL PAIN INDICATORS: As a response to a present painful stimulus, the newborn adapts to this acute stress with changes in endocrine, vegetative, immune and behavioral area. An ideal pain indicator in neonatal period does not exist. There are several different groups of them, namely contextual and developmental indicators (gestational age, contributed illness, medication, for example), physiological (heart rate, vagal tone, breathing rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, transcutaneous partial pressures of oxygen and carbon-dioxide, intracranial pressure, palm sweating) and behavioral ones (face expression, movements of limbs, cry), several neonatal pain scales were constructed on the basis of these indicators.