Skin To Skin Contact Between Mother And Premature Baby May Boost Infant’s Survival: Study

According to an analysis of studies carried out in India, a form of care involving skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her prematurely delivered baby may considerably increase the child’s chances of survival.

The findings of the study, which were reported in the BMJ Global Health journal, suggest that the intervention may be even more beneficial at lowering mortality and infection if it is initiated within 24 hours of birth and continued for at least eight hours each day.

The “kangaroo mother care” (KMC) style of child care is a newborn being held, typically by the mother, in a sling with skin-to-skin contact. Numerous studies have previously demonstrated that this practice can lower a child’s mortality and risk of infection, they claimed.

After clinical stabilization, the World Health Organization advises it as the standard of care for low birth weight infants. The best timing to start the intervention is less well understood, though.

Numerous sizable multi-nation and community-based randomized trials on the topic were evaluated by researchers at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.

To determine the impact on neonatal and infant mortality as well as serious illness among low birth weight and preterm newborns, they compared KMC with standard care, beginning the method early (within 24 hours of the birth) with later initiation of KMC.

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The study examined 31 trials totaling 15,559 infants, of which 27 studies compared KMC with standard care and four studies contrasted early with the late introduction of KMC.

According to an analysis of the data, KMC appeared to lower the chance of mortality by 32% during labor and delivery or by 28 days after birth compared to standard treatment, while also lowering the risk of sepsis and other severe infections by 15%.

They said that it became clear that the mortality reduction was observed regardless of the gestational age or infant weight at enrolment, the KMC start time, or the KMC start location (hospital or community).

The research discovered that longer daily KMC durations resulted in greater mortality benefits than shorter KMC durations.

Early commencement of KMC was shown to reduce infant mortality by 33% and the likelihood of developing clinical sepsis by 15% till 28 days after early initiation.

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The researchers acknowledged certain limitations, including the fact that very low birth weight, extremely preterm, and highly unstable neonates were frequently excluded from studies and that the studies they examined featured an intervention that participants were aware of, which may be viewed as biased.

However, the review authors said that the risk of bias in the included studies was generally low and that the certainty of the evidence for the major outcomes was moderate because their analysis had included a thorough and systematic search of existing studies.

Source PTI