Breastfeeding for Procedural Pain in Infants Beyond the Neonatal Period

Procedural pain affects every infant given that most initial immunizations are performed through injections within the first years of a child’s life. Moreover, infants who become ill are sometimes submitted to medical diagnostic and treatment procedures known to be painful and can cause distress. For an infant, breastfeeding can have analgesic effects on painful and acute procedures. It does this by reducing the distress caused through the infant’s distraction with either sucking, skin contact with mother, a general feeling of comfort, and the overall value of breast milk consumption that is thought to block neural pathways in the infant’s spinal cord. Recently conducted systematic reviews of painmanagement strategies in neonates showed that breastfeeding and sweet solutions of sucrose and glucose reduced behavioral responses and composite pain scores during painful procedures. Sweet-tasting solutions also showed to be effective in infants beyond theneonatal period,whereas breastfeeding needs to be systematically reviewed to evaluate its effectiveness in infants up to 1 year old.