Even premature babies have the neurological development to experience the adverse physical effects of pain, such as increased stress hormones, increased heart rate, difficulty breathing and poorer outcomes after surgery, pointed out Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer, director of the pediatrics pain program at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital in Los Angeles.
What's more, significant pain exposure in newborns has the potential to shape the development of the sensory nervous system, which transmits information on pain experience and can make the child more vulnerable to pain later.
In fact, early pain exposure in infancy is one of the risk factors for the development of chronic pain in adulthood -- along with genetics, Zeltzer said. Moreover, if pain is undertreated in newborns and children, it can have long-term consequences, even if the pain episode can't be recalled or is a distant memory.
Studies of kindergartners provide evidence that children's early pain experience can influence the development of their nervous system. In follow-up research of premature infants, scientists have found that by age 4 or 5, these children had more stomachaches as well as general aches and pains that seemed to correlate with the amount of time they spent in a neonatal intensive care unit after birth.
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