ABSTRACT
Ensuring Comfort during Critical Illness: A Question of Balance In providing care for critically ill children, probably the most common and arguably the most important intervention involves alleviating pain and anxiety. Continuous infusions of analgesic and sedative agents are frequently used in intensive care units (ICUs) as a means to provide a constant level of comfort. This approach has been proven to decrease the discomfort associated with mechanical ventilation, traumatic and surgical wounds, invasive devices, and procedures. Besides this basic humanitarian benefit, analgesics and sedatives also decrease oxygen consumption, modulate intensity of the stress response, foster patient safety in a potentially dangerous ICU environment by reducing risks of falls from the bed and the dislodgement of critical invasive devices, and facilitate bedside nursing care.1 For children, adequate sedation is particularly critical and based on patients’ developmental level and ability to communicate and understand what is happening to them.
