[Postoperative analgesia in children].

Postoperative analgesia remains frequently insufficient in children. This is in part due to the difficult assessment of pain in the different age groups. In addition, analgesics are commonly ordered inadequately, especially with regard to age-dependent changes in their pharmacokinetics. This often leads to an inadequate administration of different drugs. The different analgesic drugs and techniques available allow to establish guidelines for postoperative analgesia in different age groups of children, under different surgical and postoperative conditions. On the basis of such guidelines, ordered analgesics have a greater chance to be really administered at the proper time to each child.