Introduction to special issue on innovations in pediatric pain research and care

When I first began my career in pediatric pain research 25 years ago, I could fit every published article in the area in one cardboard file box. Since then, the field of pediatric pain research and care has made tremendous progress. In the 1970s and 80s, it was widely believed that babies, especially premature babies, were not able to feel pain, and that it was too risky to use anaesthetics with them. We have come a long way. The field of pediatric pain research is now a robust research area, fueled by early studies demonstrating significant under medication of children's pain relative to adults5,9 and research showing higher mortality and morbidity in children whose pain was not properly managed.1 A recent bibliometric analysis of research articles on pediatric pain published during the period from 1975 to 2010 showed exponential growth in the field with an increasingly multidisciplinary approach, and the most popular areas of focus being characterization, intervention, and assessment of pain.7 It is now well-established that pain in children is a serious and prevalent health problem,15 resulting in unnecessary suffering on the part of children and their families, and a host of short- and long-term negative health outcomes,3,18,20 including delayed healing, altered brain development, pain sensitization, increased risk of chronic pain in adulthood, and health care avoidance