Many women have heard of the benefits of breastfeeding and pacifier use in reducing the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as well as other advantages.
But many may question the effects of pacifiers on breastfeeding success. Mothers need not worry about that according to Fern Hauck, M.D., researcher and associate professor of family medicine and public health sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In a literature review, Hauck found that the highest level of evidence on pacifier use and breastfeeding shows no adverse relationship between the two. Her results appear in the April edition of the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine .
"Physicians, nurses and others who advise parents on infant care issues do need to be educated about the potential benefit of using a pacifier for SIDS prevention, and further, now need to be reassured that using the pacifier should not interfere with breastfeeding," says Hauck, who also sits on an American Academy of Pediatrics task force on SIDS. Hauck authored a study on the association between pacifier use and reduced SIDS risk.
Hauck and a team of family medicine and public health researchers at UVA, set out to summarize literature examining an association between pacifiers and breastfeeding by gathering more than 1,000 reports containing the words pacifiers and breastfeeding. Of those, 29 studies met inclusion criteria for their review. Two independent reviewers collected data on study design, population demographics and study results. For each study, quantitative and qualitative characteristics were recorded. Tests of interrater agreement were applied to the data and quality characteristics. The quantity variables were submitted to meta analysis.