The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published its first clinical practical guidelines on opioid prescriptions for children with acute pain, outlining 12 evidence-based recommendations for safely and appropriately treating pain in young patients.
The guidelines have been published alongside a technical report in Pediatrics and presented at the group’s 2024 annual meeting.
While not the only set of guidelines of its kind, ”is the first set that is really for anyone who takes care of children, not just surgeons, anesthesiologists, and pain specialists,” said Rita Agarwal, MD, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Stanford University in Stanford, California, who helped write the recommendations.
The opioid guidelines were created to give clinicians a clearer, more objective framework for safe treatment of acute pain in the outpatient setting while mitigating the risk of addiction, overdose, or other harmful effects.
”Most of what we’ve been doing thus far as practitioners has been anecdotal, from experience, or from word of mouth,” said Adaora Gabriellene Madubuko, MBBS, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark.
The AAP advises clinicians to start with the lowest possible dose based on age and weight, to use an immediate-release formula, and provide no more than a 5-day supply, unless trauma or surgery calls for longer-term pain management.
Clinicians should not use opioids as their only strategy for reducing pain in this population. Combining the drugs with other medications can enable prescription of lower doses of opioids and could decrease the side effects of other medications, according to the report. These might include acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Other strategies can include ice or heat, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, age-appropriate relaxation or distraction strategies, and music therapy.
The report also recommends prescribing naloxone alongside each prescription and training caregivers to identify a potential overdose in their child. Clinicians should also provide tips to caregivers about safe storage and disposal of opioids.
The AAP also suggests restricting the use of codeine or tramadol among children under age 12; teens aged 12-18 with obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, or severe lung disease; and patients under age 18 with postsurgical pain after tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy.
Other recommendations include:
- Use caution in prescribing opioids for children or teens who already are taking sedating medications, such as benzodiazepines.
- When treating acute, worsening pain in patients with preexisting chronic pain, clinicians should prescribe opioids when indicated and partner with any other opioid-prescribing clinicians involved in the patient’s care and with specialists in chronic pain and other opioid stewardship programs.
- Do not prescribe codeine or tramadol to patients who are breastfeeding.
Each recommendation included a strength of evidence when available. When randomized controlled trials, diagnostic studies, or observational studies were not available, the AAP based recommendations on case reports or expert opinion.
”A lot of the guidelines are really common sense,” but methodically researched and well-defined recommendations were needed to reduce risks and guide clinicians who may be wary of prescribing the drugs in the wake of the opioid crisis, Agarwal said.
When awareness of the opioid epidemic first started, ”there was very little attention being paid to children,” Agarwal said. ”The thought was, ‘This doesn’t happen to our kids, this isn’t in my backyard.”’
Over time, evidence emerged that children and teens could misuse, abuse, and become addicted to opioids just like adults, said Agarwal. In response, rates of opiate prescriptions for kids dropped off.
”We’ve heard of the horror stories of high school kids sharing and distributing opioids to their friends,” Madubuko said. She has prescribed the drugs ”with great caution. I could count on my hands how many patients I’ve prescribed opioids to over the last couple of years.”
But a decline in opioid prescribing has led to some children lacking adequate pain management and lowering their quality of life, according to the AAP practice guidelines. Underprescribing can particularly impact non-White patients and those in certain ethnic or socioeconomic groups, studies show.
The guidelines bring much-needed objectivity to the prescription process, potentially reducing some of these disparities, Agarwal said.
”By creating a standard that says, these are the things you should look for, these are the things you should treat, we leave less room for saying ‘I think this person is faking,’ or ‘I don’t think they’re having as much pain as they say they are.”’ Agarwal said. ”The guidelines emphasize the fact that if a patient says they’re having a lot of pain, you should believe them first.”
Madubuko is on AAP’s Patient and Family-Centered Care and Neonatal Care Task Forces but was not involved in the creation of the guidelines.
Brittany Vargas is a medicine, mental health, and wellness journalist.
