Effect of White Noise on Pain Response, Heart Rate, and Oxygen Saturation During Heel Puncture in Premature Infants: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the effect of white noise on pain response, heart rate, and oxygen saturation during heel puncture in premature infants. Methods: A randomized, controlled, pretest-posttest design was used. The participants were premature infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of a university hospital in Gyeonggi Province. Sixty premature infants were assigned to either an experimental (n = 30) or control (n = 30) group. The experimental group was exposed to white noise during heel puncture, and the measured variables were pain response, heart rate, and oxygen saturation. The data were analyzed using the independent t test, chi-squared test, and analysis of covariance. Results: Premature infants in the experimental group had a lower pain response and heart rate than the control group (F = 81.26, P < .01; F = 7.05, P = .01), and higher oxygen saturation than the control group (F = 4.76, P = .03). Conclusion: These results demonstrated that the white noise intervention is an effective nursing intervention to reduce the pain response and stabilize heart rate and oxygen saturation in premature infants during heel puncture.