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Evidence-Based Guidelines for Opioid Therapy in Pediatrics

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Opioid Therapy in Infants, Children, and Adolescents

Abstract

Ongoing national efforts to curb the opioid overdose epidemic have resulted in the development and implementation of national guidelines (e.g., Center for Disease Control and Prevention Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain). This has had a downstream effect onto pediatric practice. However, the scope of problematic opioid prescribing and etiology of misuse/abuse in children and adolescents remain unclear. This raises concerns regarding the application of guidelines intended for the adult population onto pediatric practice. In this chapter, we examine the epidemiologic data of pediatric opioid prescribing patterns to understand the scope of the problem and present available practice guidelines for treatment of chronic non-malignant pain as applied to children and adolescents. Finally, we review the efforts in the State of Washington, which has been on the forefront of legislation to address opioid-related deaths to exemplify the concerns regarding federal and state regulatory interventions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle, WA, USA

    See Wan Tham, Cornelius B. Groenewald & Gary A. Walco

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  1. See Wan Tham
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  2. Cornelius B. Groenewald
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  3. Gary A. Walco
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Correspondence to See Wan Tham .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatric Anesthesiology, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    Ravi D. Shah

  2. Department of Pediatric Anesthesiology, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    Santhanam Suresh

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Tham, S.W., Groenewald, C.B., Walco, G.A. (2020). Evidence-Based Guidelines for Opioid Therapy in Pediatrics. In: Shah, R., Suresh, S. (eds) Opioid Therapy in Infants, Children, and Adolescents. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36287-4_5

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