Limit sucrose as painkiller for newborns: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Giving newborns a small dose of a sucrose (sugar) solution seems to ease pain associated with having blood taken (venipuncture) for the standard newborn screening test but it does little to curb pain associated with intramuscular injections or heel lances, results of a study suggest.

Oral sucrose is widely used to manage pain associated with certain standard procedures performed in healthy term newborns, "even replacing established analgesics such as opioids and local anesthetics," the study team notes in a report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In their study, Dr. Anna Taddio at the University of Toronto in Ontario and colleagues randomly assigned 120 newborns to sucrose and 120 to placebo given 2 minutes before various painful procedures. Pain was assessed largely by infant's facial expressions and behavior and changes in heart rate and oxygen intake.

"Sucrose reduced overall pain in newborns when administered before painful medical procedures during the first 2 days after birth," they report.

However, "unexpectedly," they note, the sugar solution did not seem to curb pain during either intramuscular injection of vitamin K or during repeated heel-lancing for blood sugar monitoring in newborns of diabetic mothers.

Based on their findings, the investigators say sucrose "may be a relatively weak analgesic that is more effective at calming infants during the recovery period after a painful procedure than during the actual procedure when pain is at its peak."

SOURCE: CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, July 1, 2008.