1 Howard University Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, 2041 Georgia Aye, NW, Washington, DC 20060
To the Editor.
The majority of hospitalized children with severe pain do not receive optimal analgesia for its relief. Our opinion is based upon personal experience, communication with colleagues, and published surveys.1,2 Misuse of analgesics includes subtherapeutic doses, "prn" orders, inappropriately long intervals between doses, and use of placebos to prove that pain is not organic. This maltreatment reaches cruel proportions in infants and neonates when surgical procedures are sometimes performed without anesthesia and postoperative analgesia.