The Effect of Endotracheal Suctioning on Pain in Conscious Adult Patients in Intensive Care Unit

Pain assessment and management are an important issue to ensure the comfort of patients in the intensive care unit, and reducing pain is an important nursing intervention. Therefore, it is important to evaluate pain correctly. For correct pain management, it is necessary to correctly determine the presence and severity of pain. The study was conducted to determine whether endotracheal suctioning was painless and whether the Behavioral Pain Scale (BPS) was an accurate assessment tool to assess pain during endotracheal suctioning.

This study is a prospective clinical study. Thirty-two patients were endotracheal suctioned using the same technique by the same person, and their before-procedure BPS and visual analog scale (VAS) scores were recorded. The study was conducted in the anesthesia and reanimation intensive care unit of a university hospital between December 12, 2020, and April 14, 2021.

The before-procedure BPS and VAS scores indicated no pain. There was an increase in the procedure BPS score, whereas the VAS score did not change.

Endotracheal suctioning did not cause pain in conscious patients when the procedure was performed with the correct catheter in accordance with the guideline. In addition, it can be said that BPS is not sufficient to evaluate pain, but the reason for its high level is because endotracheal suctioning is an uncomfortable procedure. Of course, more studies and further studies are needed for a clear result.It is important for health care professionals to relieve or reduce the pain of patients during the endotracheal aspiration procedure. In addition, the presence and severity of pain associated with the endotracheal aspiration procedure should be accurately measured. This study is registered in ClinicalTrials.gov with the IDNCT04634474.The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.