The Analgesic Properties of Intraoral Sucrose

Abstract

The treatment of pain is an essential component of the clinical and ethical care of infants. Despite evidence-based practice consensus statements recommending that infants receive analgesia during minor painful procedures, numerous studies have shown that procedural pain remains poorly managed in this population. Oral sucrose administration has been associated with calming effects and reductions in observed pain behaviors with preterm and term infants aged up to 1 year. The objective of this integrative review is to synthesize findings from published randomized controlled trials evaluating the efficacy and safety of oral sucrose as a preprocedural intervention for mild to moderate procedural pain in infants. Overall, studies indicate that oral sucrose is an effective, safe, convenient, and immediate-acting analgesic for reducing crying time and significantly decreases biobehavioral pain response following painful procedures with infants.

The Effectiveness of Oral Sucrose in Managing Infants' Pain During Immunization

“…Crying Time Outcomes The current study revealed that the crying time was significantly lower in sucrose and breastfeeding groups when compared to the control group. Regarding lower crying time in sucrose compared to control, this finding is in accordance with (25,26) where sucrose was given to infants 2,4, and 6 month 2 minutes before the injection. In contrary to the study finding, sucrose did not reduce the crying time when used to manage toddler and young children's vaccination pain (23).…”

Toy‐Mediated Distraction: Clarifying the Role of Distraction Agent and Preneedle Distress in Toddlers

“…Second, health professionals should ask parents to hold toddlers close to increase proximity and remind parents that being calm in the period before the needle helps their toddlers to be calm for the needle, which in turn typically results in less preneedle distress. Third, interventions, such as administering sucrose (21,22), breastfeeding (23,24) and using topical anesthetics before the procedure, when feasible (25,26), are wellestablished methods of reducing toddler pain-related distress during painful procedures. If used consistently during immunization, these interventions may prevent, or at least reduce, future conditioned anxiety and distress responses to immunization.…”

Role of sucrose, pacifier and their combination as pain reliever among preterm neonates during painful procedures

“…[6] The well documented analgesic effect of oral sucrose (OS) in preterm and term infants can be explained by the indirect evidence of endogenous opioid mediation where its activation by oral sucrose decreases interpretation of pain information at the dorsal horn level. [7] This is supported by the finding that, naloxone administration as an opioid antagonist suppressed the analgesic effect of oral sucrose. [8] It is well known that, non nutritive sucking (NNS) is an innate intrauterine activity of the fetus that facilitates their adaptation to the surrounding environment.…”