A better way to measure pain in children

Have you ever gone to the hospital and been asked to rate your pain on a scale of one to 10? It’s a highly subjective tool. How can anyone be sure that two people rating themselves as a 7 are actually experiencing the same level of pain? More importantly, how can a non-communicative person, like an infant, tell clinicians how they feel? Emmanuel Alabi is trying to replace this rating system with a more objective approach through his research at the University of Waterloo’s School of Optometry. Working in a CFI-funded lab, Alabi conducts clinical trials that record the involuntary responses that occur in the eye when subjected to stimuli to develop a method of measuring pain that won’t leave clinicians guessing.

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