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PEDIATRICS Vol. 105 No. 1 January 2000, p. e6

ELECTRONIC ARTICLE:
Biobehavioral Pain Responses in Former Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants at Four Months' Corrected Age

Received Feb 1, 1999; accepted Aug 21, 1999.

Tim F. Oberlander*, Dagger , §, Ruth Eckstein Grunau*, Dagger , §, Michael F. Whitfield*, Dagger , Colleen Fitzgerald*, Dagger , §, Sandy Pitfield*, Dagger , §, and J. Philip Saulparallel

From the * Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; the Dagger  British Columbia Children's Hospital, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; the § Biobehavioral Research Unit, Centre for Community Child Health Research, British Columbia Research Institute for Children's & Women's Health, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; and the parallel  Children's Heart Center, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina.

Objective.  To compare biobehavioral responses to acute pain at 4 months' corrected age between former extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants and term-born controls.

Methodology.  Measures of facial behavioral and cardiac autonomic reactivity in 21 former ELBW infants (mean birth weight = 763 g) were compared with term-born infants (n = 24) during baseline, lance, and recovery periods of a finger-lance blood collection. Further, painful procedures experienced during neonatal care were quantified in both groups.

Results.  Overall, behavioral and cardiac autonomic responses to the lance were similar between groups. However, the ELBW group seemed to have a less intense parasympathetic withdrawal in the lance period and a more sustained sympathetic response during recovery than the control group. Further, in the recovery period, two behavioral patterns (early recovery and a late recovery) were apparent among the ELBW group.

Conclusions.  Biobehavioral pain responses were similar overall between both groups of infants. Subtle differences were observed in cardiac autonomic responses during the lance period and in behavioral recovery among ELBW infants. Whether these findings represent a long-term effect of early pain experience or a developmental lag in pain response remains unclear. The lack of an overall difference runs counter to previously reported findings of reduced behavioral response in former ELBW infants. biobehavioral pain response, premature infants, repetitive pain, heart rate variability. .




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