Perceived distress due to nasopharyngeal swab collection: Correspondence

Dear Editor, we would like to correspond on the publication “Assessment of perceived distress due to nasopharyngeal swab collection in healthy Indian infants participating in a clinical trial ¹ ”. Nasopharyngeal swab collection caused significant distress, which worsened with age, according to Kawade et al. ¹ The authors concluded that sample collectors should be properly trained, and parents should be encouraged to participate in the procedure. ¹ We agree that effective clinical specimen collection can lead to a high diagnostic yield and give patients the most comfort. However, regardless of the invasiveness of the treatment, fear of specimen collection is a prevalent problem among pediatric patients. ² Children may experience severe pain, worry, and suffering during a specimen collecting procedure.3, 4 Most young children who had clinical specimens collected reported having a lot of fear before the procedure. ³ Children who experienced more moderate to severe pain throughout the specimen collection process were more likely to have high pre‐procedural anxiety. ⁴ To lessen the discomfort experienced during the procedure, anxiety‐reducing therapies should be investigated. ⁴ To lessen the subjects' worry and terror, a standard quality control for specimen collecting procedure as well as patient preparation is required. The reported distress may have been lessened had the authors applied effective distraction during the procedure. Any distraction method could have been chosen. ² Distraction tactics of any kind have been shown to significantly lower the perception of pain and anxiety. ² Kawade et al. should provide details on the distraction technique(s) used with the children in their study.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

None.