one of the central tenets of pediatric cardiac intensive care is to prevent or relieve pain and distress while maintaining safe and effective care. nearly all patients admitted to cardiovascular intensive care units receive sedative or analgesic medications or both. improving the quality of pain management for for neonates and children in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting is a topic that continues to be investigated and is associated with patient outcome,inciuding duration of treatment with mechanical ventilation and ICU stay. Implementation of protocols for managing ICU analgesia and sedation has been vigorously studied. However, despite studies aimed at standardizing difinitions and assessment tools for optimal sedation, reports continue to show significant variation in practice,with subotimal pain and sedation management fir patients.
Sedative and analgesic medications are comeonly use on an as-needed basis to address breakthrough pain and/or anxiety,enhance patient safety, and alleviate stress responses. Opioid, benzodiazepines, and other adjunctive agents are regulary used as preventive agents to address discomfort surrounding procedures,prevent inadvertent endrotracheal tube dislodgement for patients being treated with mechanical ventilation, and treat insomnia. Variations in the use of as-needed sedative and analgesic medications may be related to provider biases, nonstandardized assessment, time of day,ambiguous difinitions or expectations, level of provider experience, unit structural issues, and cultural beliefs. Pattrens of use for as-needed sedative and analgesic medications are relatively understudied. In a report by Dasta and colleagues, more than 40% of as-needed sedative or analgesic order did not have adequate direction or indications. One of the earliest reports of as-needed sedation practice demonstrated important variation in nighttime as-needed sedative practice, depending on the unit stucture. Nearly 2 decades later, literature describing the epidemiology of as-needed sedative and analgesic drug usage in children is lacking.
Our understanding of how and why important practice variations exist is incomplete, and the topic is understudied. In a systematic review of sedative drug regimens to facilitate mechanical ventilation in the pediatric ICU, Hartman and colleagues reviewed 39 published studies describing 39 different sedative drug regimens and concluded that high-quality evidence to guide clinical practice remains limited. Similarly,jackson and colleagues found considerable variation in the definition and assessment of opimal sedation in a systematic review of 82 studies (75 primary studies). They concluded an overall poor quality of epidemiological data concerning current sedation practices.
Further epidemiological investigations could assist in identifying areas of opportunty for quality improvement initatives related specifically to the practice of administering as-needed (or rescue) sedative and analgesic medications in the ICU setting. The frequency of rescue sedative and analgesic medications can be a useful and easily quantifiable demographic marker for steady-state pain control and comfort management. The use of as-needed medications reflects the bedside provider’s interpretation of the patient’s discomfort or anxiety. The goal tis study was to discribe the epidemiology of as-needed sedative and analgesic medications in the pediatric CVICU and specifically the influence of time of day in our clinical practice.