Role of Anesthesia in Performing Invasive Procedures for Children with Malignancy

Pediatric oncology patients frequently need several painful procedures during their diagnostic and therapeutic process. During the past decades, most centers abroad have developed safe and effective protocols for procedural sedation and analgesia in children. This report describes procedural sedation and analgesia as performed in pediatric oncology unit and tries to report success of sedation and incidence of complication. Between 1998 and 2004, all invasive procedures for oncologic children presented in Aliasghar and Dastgheyb hospitals in Shiraz, were performed with deep sedation or general anesthesia and the failure(s) and side effects were evaluated. totally 1381 deep sedations or general anesthesia were carried out and 1792 invasive procedures were performed For 166 children (103 boys and 63 girls) with suspected or proved oncologic disease with age range of 1.5 to 15 years Lumbar puncture (LP) and intratechal injection were performed in 73% of patients mean while bone marrow aspiration and biopsy were performed in 26% and 1% of patients; respectively. The main side effects were nausea and vomiting in about 7% of patients. No failure of the invasive procedures especially LP happened. Use of general anesthesia and/or deep sedation on pediatric patients with oncologic disease is safe and can be recommended in these patients.