Infants getting shots at the doctor's
office cry less when they are held by their parents and given sugar
water and bottles or pacifiers, a study found.
The extra steps eased parents' minds
and took only about five seconds more than the old-fashioned way of
immunizing infants -- while they lie on an examining table, without
any pain relief.
"This simple, effective and
feasible intervention ... can be readily incorporated into standard
infant immunization practice," said researchers led by Dr. Evelyn
Cohen Reis at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
Their research was reported in
November's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, published
Monday.
Doctors used to believe young infants
feel little or no pain. In recent years, that thinking has changed,
and studies have shown that babies' crying can be reduced by giving
them sugar or local anesthetics during medical procedures such as
circumcisions.
With the continued introduction of new
vaccines, children get up to 20 injections by age 2, so pain relief
remains a concern throughout early childhood.
The researchers recruited families
through the Pittsburgh hospital for their study of 116 babies
receiving the typical four shots at their two-month immunizations.
Infants given the intervention received
a bottle of sugar water two minutes before the injections, then used a
bottle or pacifier during the shots while being held.
In those babies, the first cry during
the shots lasted an average of 19 seconds, compared with nearly 58
seconds for the regular-care babies. Total crying spells lasted about
92 seconds versus 118 seconds.
It is unclear whether breast feeding
also would comfort the children, because none of the mothers tried
that during the study.
Dr. Michael Wasserman, a New Orleans
pediatrician with the Ochsner Clinic Foundation, said the results were
"pretty impressive."
"We physicians need to be
flexible," Wasserman said. "As long as we think there is
limited potential of hurting the patient and distracting us from doing
our job properly, sure, we're willing to try it."
