Visceral hyperalgesia is common among children with complex medical conditions. Infants with complex congenital heart disease, specifically single ventricle interstage patients, are often found to have feeding intolerance and irritability. Gabapentin treatment has shown promise for symptomatic improvement for visceral hyperalgesia in some patients. We present a case series of five patients in which four of the five patients showed improvement within 48 h of starting gabapentin. The use of gabapentin in single ventricle interstage patients to treat visceral hyperalgesia shows promise based on our case series, but future multi-center prospective studies would be beneficial.
Keywords: Feeding intolerance; Gabapentin; Interstage; Single ventricle; Visceral hyperalgesia.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.