Babies do not suffer more: Discover Method to measure their pain

The pain of a baby who can not speak will no longer beoverlooked thanks to an innovative method that measures their pain. 

Know if a baby has severe pain during treatment is complicated because as verbalizing is difficult to estimate the degree of discomfort they are experiencing. Now, thanks to a non-invasive method developed by British researchers, you can avoid causing excessive discomfort during medical treatments. 

An electrode placed on the baby 's scalp enough to measure the degree of pain. The method, published in Science Translational Medicine, is not definitive, but provides scientists the ability to diagnose babies discomfort. 

Normally, since babies do not speak, doctors tend to overlook the pain. To determine this based on their degree of crying and facial expressions, but these signs do not always reflect reality, because babies also cry and grimace in other circumstances, such as when they are hungry, says Rebeccah Slater, one of the authors study, University of Oxford. Instead, measuring brain activity is more than possible to make a more accurate and objective calculation. 

Slater and colleagues measured brain activity of 18 newborns between 2 and 5 days old. By an electrode placed on the scalp, recorded electroencephalograms (EEG) activity of nerve cells while they applied a little hit and saw that the electrode called Cz detected a neural peak between 400 and 700 milliseconds after the moment of pain, something that did not happen if they did not hurt them. On average, babies born prematurely at 34-36 weeks of gestation showed similar responses to painful stimuli. 

In addition, researchers analyzed EEG results in a pilot study of 18 infants undergoing a routine blood, which requires the use of a needle, and validated results subsequently in four additional studies encompassed 72 babies total. 

EEG footprint was also definitional in babies born prematurely, but distinct changes in brain activity associated with non - painful stimuli such as flashing lights, loud noises or gentle touches. Researchers also found that topical anesthetics reduced the magnitude of the signal brain scan. 

With additional studies, The authors believe that this method might be good to test the analgesic efficacy in children in preverbal age. 

HispanTV