Efficacy of sweet solutions for analgesia in infants between 1 and 12 months of age: A systematic review

Abstract

Objective: To compare the efficacy of oral sweet solutions to water or no treatment in infants aged 1-12 months during immunisation. Methods: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were retrieved through internet searches or manual searches of reference lists. Search terms included newborn, infant, pain, sucrose and alternative names for sweet solutions. Summary estimates with 95% CIs were calculated and included relative risk (RR), risk difference (RD) and number needed to treat to benefit (NNTB) for dichotomous outcomes, and weighted mean differences (WMD) for continuous outcomes. Where pooling of results was not possible, a narrative summary of study results is presented. Results: Of the 695..