Non-pharmacological management of infant and young child procedural pain.

No abstract

No research to date has descriptively catalogued what parents of healthy infants are naturalistically doing to manage their infant's pain over immunization appointments during the first year of life. This knowledge, in conjunction with an understanding of the relationships different parental techniques have with infant pain-related distress, would be useful when attempting to target parental pain management strategies in the infant immunization context. This study presents descriptive information about the pain management techniques parents have chosen and examines the relationships these naturalistic techniques have with infant pain-related distress during the first year of life. A total of 760 parent-infant dyads were recruited from 3 pediatric clinics in Toronto, ON, Canada, and were naturalistically followed and videotaped longitudinally over 4 immunization appointments during the infant's first year of life. Infants were full-term, healthy babies. Videotapes were subsequently coded for infant pain-related distress behaviors and parental pain management techniques. After controlling for preceding infant pain-related distress levels, parent pain management techniques accounted for, at most, 13% of the variance in infant pain-related distress scores. Across all age groups, physical comfort, rocking, and verbal reassurance were the most commonly used nonpharmacological pain management techniques. Pacifying and distraction appeared to be most promising in reducing needle-related distress in our sample of healthy infants. Parents in this sample seldom used pharmacological pain management techniques. Given the psychological and physical repercussions involved with unmanaged repetitive acute pain and the paucity of work in healthy infants, this paper highlights key areas for improving parental pain management in primary care.

BACKGROUND: Acute pain and distress during medical procedures are commonplace for young children.OBJECTIVE: To assess the efficacy of nonpharmacological interventions for acute procedural pain in children up to three years of age.METHODS: Study inclusion criteria were: participants <3 years of age, involved in a randomized controlled or crossover trial, and use of a ‘no-treatment’ control group (51 studies; n=3396). Additional studies meeting all criteria except for study design (eg, use of active control group) were qualitatively described (n=20).RESULTS: For every intervention, data were analyzed separately according to age group (preterm-born, term-born neonate and older infant/young child) and type of pain response (pain reactivity, immediate pain-related regulation). The largest standardized mean differences (SMD) for pain reactivity were as follows: sucking-related interventions (preterm: −0.42 [95% CI −0.68 to −0.15]; neonate −1.45 [CI −2.34 to −0.57]), kangaroo care (preterm −1.12 [95% CI −2.04 to −0.21]), and swaddling/facilitated tucking (preterm −0.97 [95% CI −1.63 to −0.31]). For immediate pain-related regulation, the largest SMDs were: sucking-related interventions (preterm −0.38 [95% CI −0.59 to −0.17]; neonate −0.90 [CI −1.54 to −0.25]), kangaroo care 0.77 (95% CI −1.50 to −0.03]), swaddling/facilitated tucking (preterm −0.75 [95% CI −1.14 to −0.36]), and rocking/holding (neonate −0.75 [95% CI −1.20 to −0.30]). The presence of significant heterogeneity limited confidence in nonsignificant findings for certain other analyses.CONCLUSIONS: Although a number of nonpharmacological treatments have sufficient evidence supporting their efficacy with preterm infants and healthy neonates, no treatments had sufficient evidence to support efficacy with healthy older infants/young children.