TORONTO - Babies seem to suffer less from immunizations when the shots are administered quickly, suggest the findings of a new study that could change the way health-care professionals administer needles to young children.
Researchers from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children showed that babies who received a rapid jab were less likely to cry at all or would stop crying sooner than children who had a shot administered by the current standard approach.
The rapid shot takes about one second while the slower version takes about 10 seconds.
"We just do this quick -- in and out. Give the shot and boom! You're out. And before you know it, the needle is over,'' said lead author Dr. Moshe Ipp, a Toronto pediatrician who is also a researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Dr. Joanne Langley, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Halifax's IWK Health Centre, called the findings good news.
"Certainly nurses and doctors don't enjoy giving needles to children when it's painful,'' said Langley, who was not involved in this study.
"You are always balancing that against the benefits to the child. So basically a lifetime of protection is more important than a short few instances of pain. But if there's a way to decrease the pain, that would be very good.''
The study, which was published in the journal Archives of Childhood Diseases, was funded by an unrestricted grant from vaccine manufacturer sanofi pasteur. And Ipp has received both unrestricted grants and honoraria from the company in the past.
He and his co-authors have been looking for ways to try to ease the pain of vaccinations for children, and the stress on their parents.
"There isn't a day that goes by where you don't get one, two, three, four kids coming into the office -- those who are verbal -- saying `Am I getting a shot today?''' Ipp noted.
In this study, they set out to see whether the slow -- in relative terms -- nature of the standard approach to giving needles was adding to the pain of the procedure.
The standard approach involves inserting the needle into a muscle in the thigh or upper arm, then drawing back the plunger slightly to check that the needle hasn't entered a blood vessel. If a vessel had been struck, blood would flow back into the syringe. That process is called aspiration.
Once it's been determined the needle is in muscle, the plunger is slowly depressed to release the vaccine.
But Ipp said the areas chosen as injection sites don't really have major blood vessels in them, so aspiration unnecessarily prolongs the procedure.
He and his colleagues randomly assigned 113 infants to either receive a scheduled vaccination using the standard method or their rapid method. Eighty-two per cent of the babies in the standard shot group cried compared to 43 per cent in the rapid shot group.
Babies in the slow shot group cried for between nearly nine and 37 seconds while babies in the quick shot group cried for no longer than 11 seconds.
"There was at least a 50 per cent difference between the two in terms of pain,'' Ipp said.
Children typically get about 18 shots in the first 18 months of life, another two between ages four to six and more as they make their way through school.
Finding ways to make that less traumatic for kids could not only make things easier for them, their parents and their doctors, it could lessen the chances that kids will grow up to be adults with needle phobias, Ipp said.
The authors suggested these findings should change the way health-care professionals vaccinate children.
