Elserafy 2009.

Methods	Cross‐over RCT Painful intervention: venipuncture Study location: NICU at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Study period: January 2005 to May 2007
Participants	36 infants: median (range): 32 weeks' PMA (27 to 46), mean (SD) GA: 32.4 (2.0) ‐ 2 different mean PMAs reported in the article
Interventions	0.5 mL sterile water with pacifier 0.5 mL sterile water without pacifier 0.5 mL 24% sucrose with pacifier 0.5 mL 24% sucrose without pacifier Pacifier alone Control group (the authors do not state what this grooup received ‐ we assume no intervention)
Outcomes	Duration of cry, PIPP, HR, respiratory rate, glucose check
Notes	All infants received all of the 6 interventions and so we could not use the results in meta‐analyses
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	A paper was randomly picked so that assignments were random and double‐blinded for the sucrose and water solutions
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	High risk	Consecutively numbered envelopes, but report did not specify whether they were opaque or sealed
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Personnel were blinded to sucrose and water solutions
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Outcome assessors were blinded
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Outcomes reported for randomized infants
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	The study protocol was not available to us so we could not judge whether there were any deviations from it
Other bias	Low risk	Appears free of other bias