Overall, there is preliminary evidence that a variety of cognitive-behavioral interventions can be used with children and adolescents to successfully manage or reduce pain and distress associated with needle-related procedures. However, many of the included studies received lower quality scores because they failed to describe the randomization procedure and participant withdrawals or drop-outs from the study. Further RCTs need to be conducted, particularly for the many interventions for which we could not locate any trials.
Effects of maternal distraction versus reassurance on children's reactions to injections.
Manipulated experimentally mothers' verbal behavior during a routine intramuscular injection in order to help clarify the role of nonprocedural talk (distraction) and parental reassurance on children's reaction to the injection. 42 child-mother dyads were recruited from a general pediatric primary care clinic and were randomly assigned to a parental reassurance, parental nonprocedural talk (distraction) or minimal-treatment control group. Children in the maternal distraction condition exhibited significantly less distress during the immunization injection than those in the reassurance and control conditions. Specifically, children in the maternal distraction group exhibited less crying than children in the other two groups. Children in the reassurance and control groups did not differ from each other in terms of behavioral distress. The present findings serve further to bolster the evidence for the efficacy of maternal distraction as a way to ameliorate child distress during invasive medical procedures.