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Immunizations - childhood vaccination programme - Management
Basis for recommendation
These are pragmatic recommendations that represent good clinical practice.
- Many parents find the process of having their children immunized distressing. Explaining the benefits of vaccination and giving reassurance about the limited nature of the adverse effects should help allay fears.
- CKS found no controlled trials that investigated the efficacy of paracetamol or ibuprofen in reducing pain or fever following vaccination.
- One systematic review, including a randomized controlled trial, found evidence that the prophylactic use of paracetamol or ibuprofen was effective in relieving post-vaccination symptoms in children receiving diphtheria-tetanus-whole pertussis (DTwP) vaccine [Manley and Taddio, 2007]. However, the review found no evidence that analgesia relieved adverse effects caused by diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP).
- As paracetamol and ibuprofen have been shown to reduce fever and pain in conditions such as the common cold and influenza [Eccles, 2006], it can be reasonably extrapolated that they may be effective in relieving these symptoms on an 'as required' basis after vaccination.
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