ORPHINE HAS BEEN ONE OF the most frequently used drugs to relieve pain in many age groups. Nevertheless, debate continues about whether morphine and analgesic therapy should serve as standard of care for preterm newborns who have received ventilatory support, 1 despite the recognition that all preterm neonates feel pain. Lack of a gold standard to assess neonatal pain, fear of adverse effects, and uncertainty about the long-term effects of opioids in the neurodevelopmental outcome of newborns contribute to this clinical conundrum. Although numerous neonatal pain instruments are available, they have been based and validated on models of acute pain. 2 It is difficult, therefore, to measure the analgesic effect of morphine in neonates. Suggested adverse effects of morphine are hypotension, 3-6 sei

Objective: To study whether new pharmacological and nonpharmacological guidelines lowered numbers of painful procedures in neonates and changed the amount and frequency of analgesic therapy as compared to the results of our previous study in 2001. Design: A prospective observational study. Setting: Level III NICU of the Erasmus MC-Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam. Participants: Neonates admitted at postnatal ages less than 3 days with length of stay at least 72 h. Main Outcome Measures: Number of all potentially painful procedures and analgesic therapy recorded at the bedside during the first 14 days of NICU stay. Results: A total number of 21,076 procedures were performed in the 175 neonates studied during 1,730 patient-days (mean 12.2). The mean number of painful procedures per neonate per day was 11.4 (SD 5.7), significantly lower than the number of 14.3 (SD 4.0) in 2001 (p < 0.001). The use of analgesics was 36.6% compared to 60.3% in 2001. Sixty-three percent of all peripheral arterial line insertions failed versus 37.5% in 2001 and 9.1% venipunctures failed versus 21% in 2001. Conclusions: The mean number of painful procedures per NICU patient per day declined. Nonpharmacological pain- or stress-reducing strategies like NIDCAP and sucrose were fully embedded in our pain management. As further reduction of the number of painful procedures is unlikely, we should apply more nonpharmacological interventions and explore newer pharmacological agents.

Newborns on ventilatory support often receive morphine to induce analgesia. Animal experiments suggest that this may impair subsequent cognitive and behavioral development. There are sparse human data on long-term effects of neonatal morphine. We aimed to investigate the effects of continuous morphine administered in the neonatal period on the child's functioning. We conducted a follow-up study among 5-year-olds who, as mechanically ventilated neonates, had participated in a placebo-controlled trial on effects of morphine administration on pain and neurologic outcome. They were now tested on intelligence, visual motor integration, behavior, chronic pain, and health-related quality of life. Univariate analyses showed significantly lower overall intelligence quotient (IQ) scores for children who earlier had received morphine, that is, mean 94 (SD 14.5) versus 100 (SD 12.9) for those who received placebo (P = 0.049). Other between-group differences in outcomes were not found. The statistical difference disappeared after correction for treatment condition, open-label morphine consumption over the first 28 days, and a propensity score for clinically relevant co-variables in multiple regression analyses. However, scores on one IQ subtest, "visual analysis," were significantly negatively related to having received morphine and to open-label morphine consumption the first 28 days. The finding of a significant effect of morphine on the "visual analysis" IQ subtest calls for follow-up at a later age focusing on the higher-order neurocognitive functions. Morphine received in the neonatal period has negative effects on the child's cognitive functioning at the age of 5 years which warrants follow-up at a later age.

The COMFORTneo showed preliminary reliability. No major differences were found in cut-off values for low birth weight, small for gestational age, neurologic impairment risk levels, or sex. Multicenter studies should focus on establishing concurrent validity with other instruments in a patient group with a high probability of ongoing pain.

Clinicians estimated that most neonatal intensive care unit procedures are painful, but only a third of the neonates received appropriate analgesic therapy. Despite the accumulating evidence that neonatal procedural pain is harmful, analgesic treatment for painful procedures is limited. Systematic approaches are required to reduce the occurrence of pain and to improve the analgesic treatment of repetitive pain in neonates.