Review: sucrose reduces crying during painful procedures in newborn infants
Question Is sucrose effective and safe for reducing pain during procedures in newborn infants?
Data sources
Published studies of any language were identified using Medline (1966–95), Embase (1993–5), and Reference Update (1995–6). Search terms included infant/newborn, pain, analgesia, and sucrose. Recent neonatal and pain journals, conference proceedings, bibliographies, and personal files were hand searched.
Study selection
Studies were selected if they were blinded randomised controlled trials; the treatment included sucrose; the pain stimulus was a common medical procedure; outcomes were behavioural, physiological, hormonal, or metabolic responses to pain; and the study population was term or preterm neonates.
Data extraction
3 independent raters evaluated studies for methodological quality (eg, randomisation, double blinding, and accounting for dropouts). Data were extracted on study design, sample size and characteristics, intervention (including dosage), type of painful procedure, outcomes, results, study quality score, and study acceptability for meta-analysis. Efficacy estimates were quantified for different dosages …
