Ethics of conducting the study “Oral 24% sucrose associated with nonnutritive sucking for pain control in healthy term newborns receiving venipuncture beyond the first week of life” [Response to Letter]

Abstract

Giuseppe De Bernardo,1 Marina Riccitelli,2 Desiree Sordino,1 Maurizio Giordano,3 Sabrina Piccolo,1 Giuseppe Buonocore,2 Serafina Perrone21Department of Emergency, NICU, AORN Santobono-Pausilipon, Naples, Italy; 2Department of Molecular and Developmental Medicine, University of Siena, Siena, Italy; 3Faculty of Medicine, Federico II University, Naples, ItalyWe are glad to respond to the concerns raised by Harrison and Bueno regarding our manuscript. Some mistakes and misunderstanding in the original letter need to be addressed. The surname of the first author is De Bernardo and not Bernardo. In our paper, 66 healthy newborns with a mean of 22 days of life were enrolled. This was the first novelty in the study design. Secondly, the patients were newborns discharged from hospital and readmitted for routine controls in the neonatal ward. The setting of the study was thus quite different from neonatal intensive-care units or rooming-in inpatients in the first days of life.View the original paper by De Bernardo and colleagues This is in response to the Letter to the Editor