Selected items from the News and Latest Additions sections of www.palliativedrugs.com, the world’s leading palliative care website.
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WHO guidelines for treating persistent pain in children
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a package on the pharmacological treatment of persisting pain in children with medical illnesses, which replaces the previous guidelines ‘Cancer pain relief and palliative care in children’. The package contains information for:
- physicians and nurses
- pharmacists
- policy-makers and medicines regulatory authorities, hospital managers and health insurance managers,
a dosing card, pain scales and a wall chart. All can be downloaded from the International Children’s Palliative Care (ICPCN) Network website link below.
Changes to the guidelines include recommending using analgesic treatments in two steps according to the child’s level of pain severity. Paracetamol and ibuprofen are the medicines of choice in the first step: the treatment of mild pain. In the second step, the treatment of moderate to severe pain, morphine is the medicine of choice. WHO recommends that codeine and tramadol no longer be used for children. The initial doses of strong opioids recommended are lower than those recommended elsewhere. For more information click here.
DH guidance on clostridium difficile infections
The UK Department of Health (DH) has issued revised guidance on how to test, report and manage clostridium difficile infections. For more information click here.
Prepared by Sarah Charlesworth and Andrew Wilcock