BackgroundHospitalized premature babies often undergo various painful procedures. Kangaroo mother care (KMC) and swaddling are two pain reduction methods.ObjectivesThis study was undertaken to compare the effects of swaddling and KMC on pain during venous sampling in premature neonates.Patients and MethodsThis study was performed as a randomized clinical trial on 90 premature neonates. The neonates were divided into three groups using a random allocation block. The three groups were group A (swaddling), group B (KMC), and group C (control). In all three groups, the heart rate and arterial oxygen saturation were measured and recorded in time intervals of 30 seconds before, during, and 30, 60, 90, and 120 seconds after blood sampling. The neonate’s face was video recorded and assessed using the premature infant pain profile (PIPP) at time intervals of 30 seconds. The data was analyzed using the t-test, chi-square test, Repeated Measure analysis of variance (ANOVA), Kruskal-Wallis, Post-hoc, and Bonferroni test.ResultsThe findings revealed that pain was reduced to a great extent in the swaddling and KMC methods compared to the control group. However, there was no significant difference between KMC and swaddling (P ≥ 0.05).ConclusionsThe results of this study indicate that there is no meaningful difference between swaddling and KMC on physiological indexes and pain in neonates. Therefore, the swaddling method may be a good substitute for KMC.

Objective Speech and language disorders are considered as one of the most important public health problems that have many secondary complications, especially on the quality of life of childhood and adolescence. This study aimed to investigate the frequency of speech disorders and its association with parents, reported sucking behaviors of children including breast feeding, bottle feeding, using a pacifier, finger sucking, and other sucking behaviors in 3-5 years old children in Bushehr City, Iran. Materials & Methods This is a cross-sectional study conducted on 3-5 years old children in Bushehr City, Iran during 2015-2016. Using two-stage sampling method, preschools and kindergartens were randomly selected in the first stage and children were selected by systematic random sampling method in the second stage. Their parents completed a self-administered questionnaire to collect information on children's feeding during infancy and sucking behaviors, start and stop age of breastand bottle-feeding, pacifier use, finger sucking and other sucking behaviors. Evaluation of speech problems was conducted at each preschool with subsequent scoring by a speech therapist and her assistant using phonetic information test. The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation and frequency) and Independent t test (for comparing quantitative variables between two groups of children with and without speech disorders), Chi-square test (to examine the relationship between demographic variables and speech disorders) and logistic regression (to compare speech disorders between different groups of children in terms of sucking habits). SPSS version 18 was used for analyzing the data. In all analyzes, the significant level was considered as 0.05. Results Total of 222 children, aged 36 to 72 months were assessed (49.5% girls and 50.5% boys). Mothers, (72.5%) and fathers, (68%) education level was mostly university degree. The frequency of speech disorders was 9.5%. In speech production, 20 (9%) children had mild disorder, 1 had moderate disorder, and 201 (90.5%) children were normal. Speech production organs were normal in all children. Totally, 212 (95.5%) children were breast fed and 125 (56.3%) were bottle-fed. The majority of children (50.9%) had exclusive breast feeding. Children were breast fed for mean±SD duration of 16.08±8.06 months and were bottle-fed for 15.93±10.2 months. Eighty-three (37.4%) children had used a pacifier for an average±SD of 10.84±9.09 months; 22 (10%) children were reported to have sucked their fingers. Mean±SD onset age of finger sucking was 9.59±7.9 months and the age of finger sucking cessation was 15±8.28 months. The majority of children (4.5%) had sometimes sucked their fingers. Only 7 (3.2%) children had a sucking history other than finger and pacifier sucking. There was no significant difference between children with and without speech disorders