Multimodal Pediatric Pain Management (Part 2)

Abstract

Dr Stefan Friedrichsdorf speaks to Commissioning Editor Jade Parker: Stefan Friedrichsdorf, MD, is medical director of the Department of Pain Medicine, Palliative Care and Integrative Medicine at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota in Minneapolis/St Paul, MN, USA, home to one of the largest and most comprehensive programs of its kind in the country. The pain and palliative care program is devoted to control acute, chronic/complex and procedural pain for inpatients and outpatients in close collaboration with all pediatric subspecialties at Children’s Minnesota. The team also provides holistic, interdisciplinary care for children and teens with life limiting or terminal diseases and their families. Integrative medicine provides and teaches integrative, nonpharmacological therapies (such as massage, acupuncture/acupressure, biofeedback, aromatherapy and self-hypnosis) to provide care that promotes optimal health and supports the highest level of functioning in all individual children’s activities. In this second part of the interview they discuss multimodal (opioid-sparing) analgesia for hospitalized children in pain and how analgesics and adjuvant medications, interventions, rehabilitation, psychological and integrative therapies act synergistically for more effective pediatric pain control with fewer side effects than a single analgesic or modality.

KEYWORDS:

• analgesia
• integrative strategies
• multimodal
• pediatric pain management

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of Future Medicine Ltd.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

S Friedrichsdorf is supported, in part, by the Mayday Fund, NIH/National Cancer Institute, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota Research Grant Program, NIH/National Institute of Nursing Research and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer. S Friedrichsdorf has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

S Friedrichsdorf is supported, in part, by the Mayday Fund, NIH/National Cancer Institute, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota Research Grant Program, NIH/National Institute of Nursing Research and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer. S Friedrichsdorf has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.