Original ArticleEarly Skin-to-Skin Care in Extremely Preterm Infants: Thermal Balance and Care Environment
Section snippets
Methods
Infants were eligible for the study who were inborn or admitted after transfer within the first day after birth and born at a gestational age (GA) of <27 weeks. During the 2-year study period, 75 eligible infants were admitted. Twenty-seven infants (GA, 22-26 weeks) were included after parental consent was obtained. Reasons for noninclusion were a parent was unavailable for SSC (n = 4) or an investigator was unavailable for monitoring (n = 44). To verify that our sample was representative,
Infant Temperature
Measurements were performed for a mean SSC duration of 95 minutes (range, 60-180 minutes), at a mean postnatal age of 5 days (range, 2-9 days) (Table I). There was a slight drop in Tbody from pretest to posttest (P < .05; Table II). Tskin displayed several changes during the measurements, including a drop in Tskin when the infant was transferred from the incubator to SSC (P < .001), an increase during SSC (P < .001), and again a slight drop after transfer back to the incubator (P < .05) (
Discussion
We present detailed data on thermal balance and physical care environment during early postnatal SSC of extremely preterm infants receiving neonatal intensive care, including mechanical ventilation. After SSC, the infants maintained their Tbody within the normal range. Transfer of the infant to and from SSC resulted in a drop in infant Tskin, which increased during SSC. The physical environment during SSC is characterized by a lower Tair and relative humidity than during incubator care.
Two
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Temperature Regulation
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2022, Journal of Neonatal NursingCitation Excerpt :The transfer of heat from parent to infant begins as soon as KC begins and as long as the head and any exposed areas are covered. The humidity provided through KC is sufficient for small preterm infants (Karlsson et al., 2012) and it has been proven that swaddling does not prevent heat loss better than KC (Van Sleuwen et al., 2007). Breastfeeding has been stated as the optimal nutrition for preterm infants (Lau 2018).
Nursing care of infants born extremely preterm
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Supported by the Gillbergska Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.