SUCROSE AS AN ANALGESIC AGENT FOR INFANTS DURING IMMUNIZATION INJECTIONS

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of sucrose as an analgesic agen t during routine immunization injections for infants (age range, 2 wee ks to 18 months). Study Design: Double-blind, randomized control trial . Setting: Ambulatory care clinic of a large tertiary care center. Par ticipants: A consecutive sample of 285 infants were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups. Intervention: Subjects received eith er no intervention or drank 2 mt of sterile water or 2 mt of a 12% suc rose solution 2 minutes before administration of the immunization. Mai n Outcome Measurer Infants were videotaped during immunization for lat er interval recording of pain-induced vocalizations. Results: Results were analyzed by using two-way re-peated measure analyses of variance. Two-week-old infants who received either the sterile water or sucrose solution cried significantly less than infants who received no interv ention (F=5.92, P<.005). For older infants, those who received water o r sucrose cried significantly less only if they were administered one injection rather than two injections (F=3.36, P<.05). Conclusions: We found that when infants drank sucrose or sterile water, significantly fewer pain vocalizations were produced, but only for 2-week-old infant s. For older infants, differences were found only when the number of i njections was included in the analysis. We expand on previous findings by demonstrating that both the age of the child and the number of pai nful exposures can attenuate calming effects. In addition, the results suggest that in the absence of nonnutritive sucking, the actual analg esic effects of sucrose may be nonspecific. Further study is needed of the possible analgesic effects of sucrose.