Rushforth 1993.

Methods	Randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled study Painful intervention: heel lance Study setting: Leeds General Infirmary, Leeds, UK Study period: not stated
Participants	52 infants, 37 to 42 weeks' PMA, 2 to 7 days old
Interventions	2 mL 7.5% sucrose administered by a dropper into the mouth over a 1‐min period prior to heel lance (n = 26) 2 mL sterile water administered by dropper into the mouth over a 1‐min period prior to heel lance (n = 26)
Outcomes	Percentage time crying during sampling and 3 min following the completion of the heel lance recorded on a standard audio tape recorder and analyzed blindly at a later date
Notes	Results presented as medians only with no ranges Mann Whitney U test to evaluate duration of cry 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	Unclear risk	Not clear whether staff were blinded to sucrose and water solutions
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Blinding of outcome assessments
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Outcomes reported for all 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