Sensorial saturation improves infants' procedure-related pain behaviour in the cardiac intensive care unit: A quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Background: Painful procedures are unavoidable when providing critical care to infants in intensive care units. These adverse experiences during infancy can lead to later hyperalgesia and poor neurodevelopmental outcomes. Thus, appropriate interventions are required to relieve infant pain during these procedures.

Objectives: This study evaluated the effectiveness of sensorial saturation in reducing pain for infants during jugular central venous catheter removal procedures in intensive care units.

Methods: This study involved a quasi-experimental, repeated-measures design. Data were collected from participants sequentially recruited from April to June 2019 (control period) and July to September 2019 (experimental period). Participants included 78 infants younger than 1 year with congenital heart disease. The control group (n = 38) received a general nursing intervention using swaddling, a common child-care practice that consists of wrapping infants to restrict movements, whereas the experimental group (n = 40) received sensorial saturation using oral sugar, body massage, and verbal interaction. Infants' physiological reactions to procedural pain were measured by changes in heart rate, oxygen saturation, and respiratory rate. Infants' procedural pain and behavioural indicators were measured using the Modified Behavioural Pain Scale. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, c2 tests, and repeated-measures analysis of variance.

Results: Compared with the control group, the experimental group had lower heart rates (F = 53.15, p < .001), respiratory rates (F = 15.19, p < .001), and behavioural pain scores (F = 45.21, p < .001), both during and after the procedure.

Conclusions: Sensorial saturation can be used as a nursing intervention in infants. Given the many invasive procedures that are part of infant clinical care, sensorial saturation may be a safe analgesic alternative. The findings of this study could lead to the development of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the nonpharmacological management of acute pain in infants.(c) 2022 Australian College of Critical Care Nurses Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).