Newborn infants not only respond to pain, they may also learn to anticipate it.
Researchers from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, found that newborn infants of diabetic mothers learned to anticipate pain after undergoing numerous heel pricks in the first 24 to 36 hours of life as medical staff monitored their glucose levels.
When they underwent venipuncture on the dorsum of the hand for newborn screening at the end of the first day, the infants demonstrated more facial grimaces and crying than did babies of non-diabetic mothers who had not undergone glucose monitoring.
Infants of diabetic mothers demonstrated significantly greater visual analog scale (VAS) and grimacing pain scores, compared with normal infants, during the skin-cleansing phase that immediately preceded the venipuncture.
Investigators explain that without repeated exposure to painful procedures, skin cleansing in neonates is a non-painful event that induces little response. “However, after an average of about 10 heel lances (preceded by skin cleansing), infants responded to cleansing of the skin with behaviours indicative of pain.”
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