Drug Deemed Safe, Effective for Post-Surgical Pain in Children

Parents and physicians alike want to know the best options for pain relief for children, especially following painful surgical procedures. A new review from Sweden finds that diclofenac — a medication that works for some adults — also relieves acute pain in children.

However, a U.S. researcher is not convinced that the review showed the alternate, costlier drug to be an improvement over standard pain-relief drugs, or that it is any safer for children.

A team led by Joseph Standing, a researcher in pharmaceutical biosciences at Uppsala University, looked at 86 studies: seven on the effectiveness of the drug diclofenac and 79 studies on its safety for the relief of pain in children.

Diclofenac is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). Review studies compared diclofenac with either no treatment or a placebo; with paracetamol (acetaminophen); with other NSAIDS: nimesulide, tenoxicam or flurbiprofen; or with opioid drugs such as morphine.

The review appears in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.

“Firstly, as in adults, we have shown diclofenac to be a very good analgesic for surgical pain,” Standing said, “probably as good as standard doses of morphine, and without the nausea and vomiting.”

“Secondly,” he said, “it is truly a systematic review —the first Cochrane review to look at adverse effects in such detail from such a range of studies, and to include all studies regardless of language.” Standing said this has allowed the reviewers to assuage some of the fears about possible adverse events associated with diclofenac, such as kidney failure and bleeding after surgery.

The review discloses that Standing received a research grant from Rosemont Pharmaceuticals, a maker of diclofenac preparations, to undertake clinical safety and pharmacokinetic studies of the drug in children.

The researchers searched 17 databases in 2005, updating the search again in 2008, including a search of the World Health Organization (WHO) Monitoring Center. The review included all reports found in any language where patients who were 18 years old or younger received diclofenac for acute pain, and which included detailed safety or efficacy monitoring.

Amy Baxter, M.D., director of emergency research at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite, noted that the studies reviewed included five comparisons of diclofenac to another NSAID, but the Cochrane review did not report on pain relief from any of these. Baxter said that the most important question, arguably, is, “If the stated study question is pain relief, how does a more expensive new drug compare to a standard well-studied one?”