A Cochrane review «Effect of restricted pacifier use in breastfeeding term infants for increasing duration of breastfeeding»1 «Jaafar SH, Ho JJ, Jahanfar S et al. Effect of restricted pacifier use in breastfeeding term infants for increasing duration of breastfeeding. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2016;2016(8):CD007202. »1 included 2 studies with a total of 1 302 healthy full-term breastfeeding infants. Pacifier use had no significant effect on the proportion of infants exclusively breastfed at 3 months (RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.05; 2 trials, n=1 228), and at 4 months of age (RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.92 to 1.06; 1 trial, n=970) and also had no effect on the proportion of infants partially breastfed at 3 months (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.13; 2 trials, n=1 228), and at 4 months of age (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.03; 1 trial, n=970). However, evidence to assess the short-term breastfeeding difficulties faced by mothers is lacking.
A meta-analysis «Tolppola O, Renko M, Sankilampi U et al. Pacifier use and breastfeeding in term and preterm newborns-a systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur J Pediatr 2022;181(9):3421-3428. »2 included 10 RCTs (5 in term and 5 in preterm newborns). There was no difference of breastfeeding rates among term infants at 2, 3, 4, and 6 months of age (n=2604) between restricted pacifier use compared to no restrictions in pacifier usage.