Clinical Limitations of Non-pharmacological Comfort Tools for Needle Sticks in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU)

During a neonate’s stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), they will undergo many painful, but necessary, procedures to deliver treatment and to monitor physiological status. Many of these methods will involve skin breaks by a needle. While pharmacological analgesics are available for larger procedures like surgeries and intubation, the volume of painful procedures neonates must endure makes the use of pharmacological analgesics impractical for every painful procedure. Due to their immature nervous system, preterm neonates have limited ability to modulate pain. Recent studies have demonstrated that repeated pain endured during the neonatal period is associated with long-term neurological deficits. Over the past decades, studies have begun to quantify the effectiveness of non-pharmacological comfort tools (nonnutritive sucking, swaddling, oral sucrose, ShotBlocker, etc.) in reducing neonatal pain during needles sticks