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news.Canadian researchers have said that a comparison study of three common painkillers has found that ibuprofen was the most effective at treating pain in children.
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They discovered that the pain killer was most effective for children with broken bones, bruises and sprains. Ibuprofen beat generic acetaminophen and codeine in a study of 300 children treated at a Canadian hospital.
The children enrolled were six to 17 years old with pain from a musculoskeletal injury to extremities, neck, and back that occurred in the preceding 48 hours before presentation in the emergency department.
The primary outcome was change in pain from baseline to 60 minutes after treatment with study medication as measured by using a visual analog scale.
The children asked to show how much pain they were feeling by placing a mark on a horizontal pain intensity scale from 0 to 100. This is the visual analogue scale, and in this case it measured 100 mm wide.
Patients in the ibuprofen group had a significantly greater improvement in pain score with a mean decrease of 24 mm than those in the codeine with a mean decrease of 11 mm, and acetaminophen which had a mean decrease of 12 mm at 60 minutes.
In addition, at 60 minutes more patients in the ibuprofen group achieved adequate analgesia than the other two groups. There was no significant difference between patients in the codeine and acetaminophen groups in the change in pain score at any time period or in the number of patients achieving adequate analgesia.