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The overuse of opioids for treating pain in children is a serious concern. Researchers in Canada randomized 154 children aged 5 to 17 years to oral morphine (0.5 mg/kg; maximum dose, 20 mg) or ibuprofen (10 mg/kg; maximum dose, 600 mg) every 6 hours as needed for 48 hours after outpatient minor orthopedic surgery. Pain was assessed with the Faces Pain Scale-Revised (score of 0 = no pain, 10 = maximal pain) immediately before and 30 minutes after each dose. The primary outcome was the difference between pre- and postdose scores for the first medication dose.
Overall, 13 patients did not take any medication and 12 patients took only one dose. Time to the first dose was 3.5 hours. In both the morphine and ibuprofen groups, the median predose pa…