BREASTFEEDING AS A NON-PHARMACOLOGICAL METHOD FOR PAIN RELIEF

Abstract

Pain can be described as an unpleasant sensorial and emotional experience, associated to a real or potential damage to the body's tissues. The existence of scales for the evaluation of the pain, added to non-pharmacological interventions, helps in algic prevention and control. The current study had as its main goal, identifying the relation between breastfeeding and pain relief, comparing to other non-pharmacological methods. It is about an integrative bibliographic research, from publications during the period from 2004 to 2014, available in the LILACS and CINAHL data base, in Portuguese, Spanish or English, from the descriptors "pain", "breastfeeding" and "newborn". The final sample was built by 14 articles, which generated two categories, such as: "Pain in child" and "Breast Feeding as a non-pharmacological measure to pain relief". Researches made in the last decades realized that the newborn can feel pain, as well, when in prolonged or repetitive state, can bring changes in the functions of the nervous system in development, and, therefore, are enough to try out bad stimulus. Several studies bring non-pharmacological measures for controlling pain, breastfeeding being the one that obtained a significant superiority when compared to the other methods. However, few professionals are able to identify pain, as well as achieving relief interventions.