Newborns are the most fragile patients and they require a careful approach to pain. The field has had great breakthroughs in recent years. Many pain scales are now available, and both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic approaches to neonatal analgesia have been developed. There is much that can still be done to improve the neonatal environment, newborns’ care and parents’ hospitality. Neonatal pain treatment is one of the emerging topics in modern pediatrics.

The goal of this Research Topic is to track and describe the basis and development of pain treatment in babies (prevention, assessment and analgesic approach), adding to the more recent advances in the field. It will describe the recent progress in pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic analgesic treatments. It will also show that neonatal pain treatment should be integrated with other topics such as Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP), parents’ and caregivers’ support, and environmental stressors which can disrupt the baby and make analgesic treatment less effective. This Research Topic will offer a unique opportunity to explore recent advances, and to treat neonatal pain with complete well-being in mind.

We are interested in both reviews and research papers, particularly on:
• Analgesic drugs in neonatology
• Drugs for intubation
• Clinical differences in the uses of sedatives and analgesics
• Palliative care and procedural pain
• How the environment can influence the efficacy of analgesic treatment
• Is pain contagious? Parents’ and caregivers’ pain influence procedural pain.
• New tools to measure pain
• New tools to produce less pain (new lancets, needles, creams, distractors)
• The use of sensorial saturation for procedural pain
• Breastfeeding and pain
• Physiology of pain sentience
• Analgesia and anesthesia during surgery before and after birth
• Drawbacks of analgesics in neonatal age

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Frontiers in Pediatrics

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