Gormally 2001.

Methods	RCT, factorial design Painful intervention: heel lance Study location: Lakeshore General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Study period: not stated
Participants	94 normally developing newborns, mean PMA 39.4 weeks on 2nd or 3rd day of life 9 infants did not complete the study for the following reasons: early discharge, nurse or testing room unavailability to obtain heel lance, infant removed from study prior to start date, technical difficulties
Interventions	No holding + sterile water given by pipette (n = 21) No holding + 0.25 mL 24% sucrose solution (0.06 g) given by pipette (n = 22) Holding + sterile water given by pipette (n= 20) Holding + 0.25 mL 24% sucrose solution (0.06 g) given by pipette (n = 22) All solutions given 3 times at 30‐s intervals
Outcomes	Percentage of time crying, pain concatenation scores for facial activity, mean HR, mean vagal tone index, measurements prior to intervention and at 1, 2, and 3 min after heel lance
Notes	Factorial ANOVA to assess effects on behavioural and physiological measures No means or standard deviations reported in numbers, only in graph form Adverse effects were not evaluated
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Sequence generation not described
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Allocation concealment not described
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Sucrose and water solutions blinded
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Facial coders were blind to solution assignment only but not to holding
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Results reported for all infants who completed the study
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