Can nitroglycerine ointment facilitate newborn heelstick blood collection? A randomized controlled trial.

Unlabelled: Newborn heelstick blood collection can be a painful procedure in part because of the time required to obtain sufficient quantity of blood. No previous studies have determined whether local vasodilatation using topical nitroglycerine ointment (NGO) would facilitate heelstick blood collection.

Objective: To determine if the topical application of NGO would reduce the time needed to collect the required amount of blood for newborn metabolic screening and, in turn, reduce the pain/distress of the procedure.