HALLUCINATIONS caused by sedatives and opiates given to children in intensive care are not just a bad dream. They may cause more stress than real memories.
When Gillian Colville and colleagues at St George鈥檚 Hospital in London in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, they found that nearly a third suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Being able to remember facts about what had happened to them didn鈥檛 make PTSD more likely, but crucially, children who experienced delusions while in the ICU tended to have higher PTSD scores than those that didn鈥檛 (American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, vol 177, p 976). Children who received medication for longer were also more likely to have delusions, which included feeling bugs crawling on them and seeing people who looked like their parents.
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Sedatives and opiates relieve pain and reduce anxiety, enabling children to tolerate lifesaving procedures like having a breathing tube inserted, so they can鈥檛 be avoided. 鈥淏ut if medical staff understand this is a risk, they might take measures that could help,鈥� says Colville, such as having 鈥渄rug holidays鈥� in which doses are skipped, or weaning them off the drugs more slowly.
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