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Pain remains common in hospitalized children. A study of 200 hospitalized surgical and medical patients, average age nine years, found that 86% reported pain and 40% had moderate-to-severe pain. Surgical patients experienced pain more often than nonsurgical patients, and girls had higher pain scores than boys. When opioids were prescribed to be given as needed, no more than a third of children received them, and no more than 69% of children prescribed nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs to be given as needed received a dose. This suggests that the as-needed drug delivery method leaves many young patients undermedicated. The authors, writing in Pain Management Nursing (still in press as of this writing), call for "improvements in educational and research initiatives to better treat children in pain."