To determine whether skin-to-skin contact between mothers and their newborns will reduce the pain experienced by the infant during heel lance.
A prospective, randomized, controlled trial.
Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts.
A total of 30 newborn infants were studied.
Infants were assigned randomly to either being held by their mothers in whole body, skin-to-skin contact or to no intervention (swaddled in crib) during a standard heel lance procedure.
The effectiveness of the intervention was determined by comparing crying, grimacing, and heart rate differences between contact and control infants during and after blood collection.
Crying and grimacing were reduced by 82% and 65%, respectively, from control infant levels during the heel lance procedure. Heart rate also was reduced substantially by contact.
Skin-to-skin contact is a remarkably potent intervention against the pain experienced during heel stick in newborns.
Comments
further studies please
Congratulations, this is a great subject for research. It would be more impressive and could be taken seriously if your sample size was at least 100 babies and moms. Also, if your control babies were dressed and held by their mothers compared to the skin-to-skin babies who were held. Please do a further randomised controlled trial with a large number of babies. Thank you and good luck with the next.
Where's the control?
I am unimpressd with Larry Gray, Lisa Watt, and Elliott M. Blass' study of newborns. Instead of comparing swaddled, cribbed infants with infants held skin-to-skin to their mothers, the study should have compared clothed babies that were held to skin-to-skin held babies. Do you see? This study is not properly controlled. I can't believe it even received funding. Go back to Statistics 101 please.