ArticlePaediatric & neonatal pain2025
A Critical Evaluation of the COMFORTneo Scale's Validity and Applicability for Preterm Infants.
Article in Paediatric & neonatal pain, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association between exposure to stress and experienced discomfort in preterm infants.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- The effect of comprehensive developmental positioning program training on nurses' performance and infant comfort hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- A Critical Evaluation of the COMFORTneo Scale's Validity and Applicability for Preterm Infants.Paediatric & neonatal pain · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COMFORTneo scale is widely used to assess pain in infants, yet its validity for extremely preterm (EPT) infants (< 26 weeks' gestation) remains unclear. This study evaluated the scale's ability to distinguish pain in EPT versus PT infants (26-37 weeks' gestation). We performed a retrospective cohort study in a tertiary neonatology intensive care unit, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands. All infants were born before 37 weeks' gestation between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2022. The COMFORTneo scale's unidimensionality was assessed using the partial credit model, and its discriminatory ability between EPT and PT infants was evaluated through differential item functioning plots. Among 1021 infants, 106 were EPT. The COMFORTneo scale indicated unidimensionality for all preterm infants. However, in EPT infants, alertness and facial tension did not effectively discriminate between pain and no pain in ventilated infants, while agitation and muscle tone failed to discriminate in non-ventilated infants. While the COMFORTneo scale is unidimensional for preterm infants, the discriminatory ability of this scale between ventilated and non-ventilated EPT infants is limited.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.