Early human development
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Early human development · Jul 2013
Salivary biomarkers are not suitable for pain assessment in newborns.
Newborns admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit are repeatedly subjected to painful or stressful procedures; therefore, objective assessment of their pain is essential. An increasing number of scales for neonatal pain assessment have been developed, many of which are based on physiological and behavioral factors. Recently, salivary biomarkers have been used to assess stress in adults and older infants. This study aimed to determine whether salivary biomarkers can be useful objective indices for assessing newborn pain. ⋯ NIPS score (behavioral assessment) and heart rate are useful stress markers in newborns. However, neither sCgA nor sAA is suitable for assessing newborn pain.