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Evidence summaries

Pacifier Use in Breastfeeding Term Infants

Pacifier use in healthy term breastfeeding infants, started after lactation is established affects not the prevalence or duration of exclusive and partial breastfeeding. Level of evidence: "A"

A Cochrane review [Abstract] 1 included 2 studies with a total of 1 302 healthy full-term breastfeeding infants. Pacifier use had no significant effect on the proportion of infants exclusively breastfed at 3 months (RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.05; 2 trials, n=1 228), and at 4 months of age (RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.92 to 1.06; 1 trial, n=970) and also had no effect on the proportion of infants partially breastfed at 3 months (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.13; 2 trials, n=1 228), and at 4 months of age (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.03; 1 trial, n=970). However, evidence to assess the short-term breastfeeding difficulties faced by mothers is lacking.

A meta-analysis 2 included 10 RCTs (5 in term and 5 in preterm newborns). There was no difference of breastfeeding rates among term infants at 2, 3, 4, and 6 months of age (n=2604) between restricted pacifier use compared to no restrictions in pacifier usage.

    References

    • Jaafar SH, Ho JJ, Jahanfar S et al. Effect of restricted pacifier use in breastfeeding term infants for increasing duration of breastfeeding. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2016;2016(8):CD007202. [PubMed]
    • Tolppola O, Renko M, Sankilampi U et al. Pacifier use and breastfeeding in term and preterm newborns-a systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur J Pediatr 2022;181(9):3421-3428. [PubMed]

Primary/Secondary Keywords