MEETING ABSTRACT Open Access The management of pain: non-pharmacologic analgesia

“Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. Each individual learns the application of the word through experiences related to injury in early life”[1]. It is now clear that pre-mature and full-term newborns have the neuroanatomi-cal pathways from the periphery to cortex required for nociception. In fact by the 23th week of gestation pain-ful stimuli are associated with physiologic, hormonal, and metabolic markers of the stress response. Indeed pain perception may be greater because of immaturity of descending inhibitory pathways [2]. Preterm infants are particularly vulnerable to brief and long term effects of pain and stress because system modulating sensory experience is immature[3,4]. Neonatal intensive car