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New York - Playing with an iPad mini before going under anaesthesia could relax some kids more than a sedative would, also making life easier for their parents and hospital staff, according to a recent study.
"Anxiety is a major source of concern for children going to the hospital for anything, but especially for surgery and it's also a major source of dissatisfaction for their parents," said lead author Dr Samuel C Seiden. "That whole process of leaving parents or having someone put a mask over your face can be a very traumatic experience.
"That's why we spent a lot of time thinking about how we could make this less anxiety-provoking for children," said Seiden, a professor of paediatric anaesthesiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Many hospitals have reported using music, videos and games to distract kids from their fears in recent years, sometimes as an alternative to sedation, Seiden said.
He and his team wanted to test the iPad mini as a distraction method because it is interactive and easy to use.
Anxiety decrease
For the study, which is published in the journal Paediatric Anaesthesia, 108 kids ages 1 to 11 years old were randomly assigned to receive either oral midazolam syrup - a sedative similar to valium or xanax - or an Apple iPad mini before going under anaesthesia for surgery.
Kids who received the iPad chose an age-appropriate game and started playing with it when it was time to leave their parents to go for preoperative anaesthesia, and could play right up until the time they received the anaesthesia.
The other group received the sedative at least 15 minutes before anaesthesia.
Researchers found that kids ages 1 - 11 who played with the tablet showed a nine-point decrease in anxiety (on a scale of 100) when they separated from their parents compared to kids who received the sedation.
Kids ages 2 - 11 who played with the tablet when anaesthesia was first being administered showed a 14-point decrease in anxiety compared to the kids who got a sedative.
Recovery room stay was also shorter by almost half in the tablet group (87 minutes in the tablet group versus 111 minutes in the midazolam group). The study also found that 81% of parents in the tablet group were very satisfied with the separation compared to 59% in the sedative group.
"It used to be very common to give kids under 8 a sedating medication but now our default practice is, if the kid is over 4, we expect we can distract with a tablet," Seiden said.
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