Objective: To investigate the analgesic effect (measured with Neonatal Infant Pain Scale (NIPS)) of breastfeeding (BF) in addition to skin-to-skin contact (SSC) versus other methods of non-pharmacological analgesia during blood sampling through heel lance in healthy term neonates.
Design: Randomised controlled trial.
Setting: Tertiary level maternity ward.
Patients: One hundred thirty-six healthy term newborns.
Inclusion criteria: healthy term neonates, wish to breastfeed and absence of feeding during the previous 60 min.
Intervention: Neonates were randomly assigned to four groups: Group breastfed with SSC (BF+SSC Group) (n=35); Group sucrose with SSC (Sucrose+SSC Group) (n=35); SSC Group (n=33); or Sucrose Group (n=33). Babies were recorded with a video camera.
Outcome measures: Three observers watched the videos and measured NIPS score at three time points (t0: 2 min before heel prick; t1: During heel prick; and t2: 2 min after the heel prick). The influences of non-pharmacological methods on crying time, percentage of crying while sampling, heart rate, number of attempts and duration of sampling were also studied.
Results: BF+SSC Group achieved a significant lower median NIPS score (value=1) compared with other groups (value=2, 4 and 4, respectively). The percentage of neonates with moderate-to-severe pain was also lower in the BF+SSC Group. Both groups BF+SSC and Sucrose+SSC achieved a significant lower percentage of crying compared with SSC Group.
Conclusions: This study suggests that BF in addition to SSC provides superior analgesia to other kinds of non-pharmacological analgesia in healthy term neonates during heel prick.
Keywords: Neonatology; Pain.