Oral glucose and venepuncture reduce blood sampling pain in newborns

The objectives of this study were to measure pain symptoms in healthy fullt erm newborns undergoing routine blood sampling with different methods. The 120 study subjects were randomly allocated to one of four groups with 30 ba bies in each, namely venepuncture or heel stick, with or without oral gluco se administration. Pain was assessed from the duration of crying within the first 3 min, the Premature Infant Pain Profile (PIPP) and changes in heart rate. When the babies received 1 ml 30% glucose prior to skin puncture the re was no significant difference between the heel stick and venepuncture gr oup either in mean crying time (12.9 and 11.6 s, respectively) or in PIPP s core (3.9 and 3.3). When no glucose was given crying time was 57.3 s in the heel stick group and 26.8 s in the venepuncture group (P = 0.0041) and the mean PIPP scores were 8.4 and 6.0, respectively (P = 0.0458). This study s uggests that if oral glucose is given prior to skin puncture the choice of blood sampling method has no impact on the pain symptoms. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.