NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Some consider TV mind-numbing, but pediatric researchers have found it may be pain-numbing as well.

In a study of 69 children undergoing blood tests, Italian researchers found that when they showed kids cartoons during the procedure, it distracted them enough to ease their pain.

The finding may not come as a surprise to parents who've seen their child entranced by the TV screen. What may surprise them is the finding that mothers couldn't soothe their children nearly as well as television did.

The study found that children's pain was almost as great when their mothers were near, offering comforting words and caresses, as when their moms merely stood in the room. It's possible, according to the researchers, that a mother's own emotions keep her from effectively distracting and calming her child.

Or the findings may simply be a testament to the "distracting power of television," they report in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

For the study, a team led by Dr. Carlo Bellieni of the University of Siena randomly assigned 69 7- to 12-year-olds to one of three groups. Some had blood drawn while their mothers stood by, offering no distraction; in a second group, mothers comforted their children during the procedure; and in the third group, children were shown a cartoon movie for distraction.

Afterward, the children were asked to score their pain level on a visual scale from 0 to 100. Children in the TV group rated their pain much lower than those in the other two groups; on average the TV group scored 8.91, versus 23.04 in the no-distraction group and 17.39 in the mother-soothed group.

Mothers also believed their children suffered less pain when allowed to watch TV.

Pain involves both a stimulus that sends a message to the brain -- like a needle into an arm vein -- and the brain's processing of that information. When the brain is distracted, this changes a person's perception of pain. Research has shown, for instance, that virtual reality technology can keep the brain from processing pain signals during an uncomfortable medical procedure.

The current findings, according to Bellieni's team, "support the benefit of introducing a distracting environment during minor painful procedures in children."

But they're quick to point out that parents still matter. Even if mothers didn't rid their children of pain in this study, the researchers note, children still benefit from knowing their parents are with them in times of stress.

SOURCE: Archives of Disease in Childhood, online August 17, 2006.

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