A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of 25% Sucrose Orally on Painful Procedure among Neonates in NICU at Mehta Children’s Hospital, Chennai, India

Many neonates admitted to hospital undergo repeated invasive procedures. Oral sucrose is frequently given to relieve procedural pain in neonates on the basis of its effect on behavioural and physiological pain scores. The purpose of the study is to assess the level of pain among neonates before and after administration of 25% sucrose, to assess the effectiveness of 25% sucrose orally among neonates in NICU and to assess the association between the level of pain among neonates and selected demographic variable such as age, sex, weight, gestation, ordinal position of the neonates and type of invasive procedure. The study method was Evaluate research approach and a pre experimental (one group pre-testpost-test design) was used. Non randomized purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample for the study. The total sample consists of 60 neonates admitted in NICU. Pain was assessed during invasive procedure before administration of 25%sucrose and 0.02- 2ml sucrose was given 2mins prior to next painful procedure. The pain was assessed during procedure at 30second and at 1minute by neonatal infant pain scale (NIPS) for neonates. The result of the study concluded that mean and standard deviation score for pain during procedure, 30 seconds and 1 minute in the pre-test was 6.5, 4.7, 2.5 and in the post test were 4.2, 1.9, 0.5. Thecalculated‘t’ value was 9.4***, 10.6***, 7.4*** is significant p value (<0.001). It reveals that there was significant difference existing between pre-test and post-test pain score. It is evident that the 25% sucrose is significantly effective in reducing of pain among neonates undergoing painful procedure.