BACKGROUND: Painful procedures intensify hospital-related stress and anxiety leading to unpleasant experience that can adversely affect procedure outcomes and health seeking behaviors.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of a cold vibrator device on pain perception of children aged 6-12 years old during Mantoux Test at the Out-Patient Department of the Philippine Children's Medical Center.

METHODOLOGY: This is a single blinded, randomized control trial where one-hundred four (104) subjects were randomly assigned to experimental (54 subjects) and control group (50 subjects) through fishbowl method. The experimental group received the cold vibrator prior to Mantoux test while the control group received the Mantoux test alone. Pre and post procedural heart rate, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation were obtained. The responses were evaluated using the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Scale.

RESULTS: Pain score was higher in the control group. Wilcoxon Rank-Sum Test showed mean rank of 67.5 with aggregated pain rank of 3645.00 compared to experimental group (with cold vibrator) of 36.3 with aggregated pain rank of 1815.00 with a p value 0.0000000046. There was no significant difference between the physiologic parameters (heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation) before and after procedure between the two groups.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: The use of the cold vibrator was effective in reducing pain perception. It can be used as an adjunct to mitigate pain for needle-related procedures. Demographic data could also be correlated to the pain scores of the subjects. 

Human ; Male ; Female ; Pre-adolescent (a Child 6-12 Years Of Age) ; Pain ; Pain Perception