Pain Management
While you and your child are at the Ohio Surgery Center, the staff will work with your child to keep your surgical pain at a manageable level. It is expected after having surgery that there will be some pain or discomfort and while we cannot totally relieve all pain, the goal is to have it at a level where it is tolerable for our patients.We will ask your child to rate their pain frequently throughout their experience at the surgery center. We use different scales to monitor pain based on developmental levels.
For teens and older children, we ask them to rate their pain between 0 and 10 with 0 be absolutely no pain or discomfort, and 10 being the most pain they could imagine.
For children, between the ages of 3 years and up we use the Wong Baker Faces scale. It is a series of faces ranging from a happy smile to a very sad face with tears, we ask the child to point to the face that best describes how they are feeling.
Wong Baker FACES Pain Scale
Face 0 is very happy because there is no hurt at all. Face 1-2 hurts just a little bit. Face 3-4 hurts a little more. Face 5-6 hurts even more. Face 7-8 hurts a whole lot. Face 9-10 hurts as much as you can imagine, although you don’t have to be crying to feel this bad.
Brief word instructions: Point to each face using the words to describe the pain intensity. Ask the child to choose the face that best describes how he is feeling and record the appropriate number.
For our younger patients or patients who cannot verbally tell us how much discomfort they are having (including patients in the recovery area that are just waking up from anesthesia), we use a FLACC scale that monitors behaviors.
The doctors and nurses will administer medication to help manage the pain. There are other things that may help to ease the discomfort; here are a few:
ICE
When using ice it is recommended that you place a towel or washcloth on the skin and put the ice pack on top of it. The ice should only be held there for 10 minutes at a time.
POSITIONING
It may help to ease the discomfort if you change positions. For example, we encourage those patients having sinus procedures to keep their head elevated. This decreases the pressure to the sinus area and therefore helps to ease the pain.
DISTRACTION
It helps to concentrate on something other than the pain. For children, reading them a story or watching a favorite video will help them to think of something other than the pain or discomfort. For adults, listening to some music or thinking about their favorite vacation spot can help to manage the pain.
You will receive more procedure specific pain relief ideas with your post operative instructions.