Rush 2005.

Methods	Prospective RCT Painful intervention: screening for ROP Study location: NICU at a university‐affiliated hospital, Amarillo, Texas, USA Study period: not stated
Participants	30 infants < 32 weeks' GA or weighing < 1500 g Sucrose group mean GA 29.57 weeks (range 26 to 32) Control group mean GA 28.8 weeks (range 25 to 31)
Interventions	Sucrose group: swaddled in a warm blanket, pacifier packed with gauze soaked in 24% sucrose and held by a nurse until 15 min after the eye examination Control: no swaddling, no sucrose and not held by nurse All infants received eye drop instillation of 0.5% proxymetacaine and 1% tropicamide,  then 15 min later eye drop instillation of 0.5% tropicamide and 2.5% phenylephrine All eye drops were instilled into both infant's eyes before the ROP examination
Outcomes	Pulse rate, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation at baseline (30 min before instillation of proxymetacaine), 5 min before eye examination, 3 different times during eye examination and 5 min after the completion of the examination; total crying time; time required to return to baseline value
Notes	ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed rank test and the Pearson test were used to evaluate outcomes Results were reported as medians, means and standard errors of the means (SEM). P values were also reported Adverse events 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	High risk	No blinding to interventions
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Outcome assessments blinded
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Pulse rate, respiratory rate data not reported
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	Pulse rate, respiratory rate data not reported
Other bias	Low risk	Appears free of other bias