Women's
Health Premature
Births
Massage and premature babies
The explosion of narcotic and alcohol abuse in the USA has been accompanied by a surge of premature cocaine-exposed babies who often suffer post-natal complications and exhibit poor co-ordination and motor skills along with increased stress behaviours during infancy. Researchers at the department of Pediatrics at the University Miami School of Medicine studied the effect of massage on thirty cocaine-exposed premature babies who were randomly assigned to receive massage therapy or placed in a control group as soon as they were considered medically stable.
The fifteen babies in the treatment group received three 15-minute massages over a period of three consecutive hours each day for ten days. All of the babies were monitored as to weight gain, post-natal complications and motor skills and compared with the babies in the control group.
The researchers found that the massage group showed significant improvements over the control group. At the end of the 10-day study period the babies who received massage averaged 28% greater weight gain per day (33g as opposed to 26g in the control group) even though both the dietary volume and calorific intakes were the same in both groups. The babies in the massage group also showed significantly fewer post-natal complications and stress behaviours than the control group, and they also demonstrated more mature motor skills.
This study gives a fascinating insight into the physiological benefits of massage therapy for premature cocaine-exposed babies. It seems that as little as three fifteen minute sessions of massage over a 10 day period can make a dramatic difference to a baby's development and effectively reduce the main problems associated with cocaine exposure. The study indicates that massage therapy may have an increasingly significant role to play in paediatric medicine.
Wheeden A; Scafidi FA; Field T; Ironson G; Valdeon C; Bandstra E. Massage effects on cocaine-exposed preterm neonates. Department of Pediatrics, University of Miami School of Medicine, Florida 33101. Journal of Developmental Behavioural Pediatrics (UNITED STATES) Oct 1993, 14: 5:
318-22.
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Massage used in post-delivery care on neonatal body temperature
Doctors at the at Kathmandu Maternity Hospital recently demonstrated that massage may play a valuable role in helping maintain babies body temperatures immediately after birth. The researchers first carried out a prospective observational study of post-delivery care and neonatal body temperature and then followed it with a randomised controlled intervention study using three simple methods used to help maintain the babies’ body temperatures.
Five hundred infants were monitored in the initial observation study and three hundred in the intervention study. In the observation study, 85% of infants had temperatures less than 36 degrees C at 2 hours following the birth and nearly 50% still had temperatures less than 36 degrees C at 24 hours after the birth.
Most of the infants who were cold after 24 hours had initially become cold at the time
of delivery (incredibly, only seven infants had been both well dried and wrapped). In the
intervention study, all infants were dried and wrapped before random assignment
to one of the three methods: the "kangaroo" method, the traditional "oil
massage" or a "plastic swaddler". All three methods were found to be equally effective.
Overall, 38% of the infants had temperatures less than 36 degrees C at 2 hours and less than 18% ( at 24 hours.
Johanson RB; Spencer SA; Rolfe P; Jones P; Malla DS. Effect of post-delivery care on neonatal body temperature. Maternity Hospital,
Kathmandu, Nepal. Acta Paediatr (NORWAY) Nov 1992, 81 (11) p859-63
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Predicting which preterm infants benefit most from massage
therapy
Researchers at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Miami School of Medicine studied ninety-three preterm infants; the mean gestational age of the infants was 30 weeks; the mean birth weight, 1204 g, and mean duration in the intensive care was 15 days. All of the babies were randomly assigned to either a massage therapy
group or a control group as soon as they were considered medically stable.
The fifty babies in the treatment group received three daily 15-minute massages for 10 days. The massage therapy infants gained significantly more weight per day than the infants in the control group (32grams compared to 29 grams). All of the babies in the treatment and control groups were divided into high and low weight gainers based on the average weight gain for the control group. Seventy per cent of the massage therapy infants were classified as high weight gainers whereas only forty per cent of the control infants were classified as high weight gainers.
A closer inspection of the records revealed that the babies who needed the most help (ie. those infants who had experienced more complications before the study began) actually
benefited more from the massage therapy. Using those parametres, the researchers accurately predicted that seventy eight per cent of the infants would benefit significantly from the massage therapy. Thus, they concluded from the results, that it was possible to to identify those infants who would benefit most from future massage therapy programs.
Scafidi FA; Field T; Schanberg SM. Factors that predict which preterm infants benefit most from massage therapy. Department of Pediatrics, Touch Research Institute, University of Miami School of Medicine, FL 33101. J Dev Behav Pediatr (UNITED STATES) Jun 1993, 14 (3) p176-80
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Music
& Premature infants in neonatal intensive care.
To assess the
benefits of lullaby singing and multimodal stimulation on premature
infants in neonatal intensive care, 40 infants in a Level III Newborn
Intermediate Care Unit were divided into control (n = 20) and experimental
(n = 20) groups by pair matching on the basis of gender, birthweight,
gestational age at birth and severity of medical complications.
Participants met these
project criteria: (a) corrected gestational age > 32 weeks; (b) age
since birth > 10 days; and (c) weight > 1700 g. All participants had
been referred for developmental stimulation by the medical staff.
Experimental infants received reciprocal, multimodal (ATVV) stimulation
paired with line singing of Brahms' Lullaby.
Stimulation was provided
for 15-30 minutes, one or two times per week from referral to discharge.
Dependent variables were (a) days to discharge, (b) weight gain/day, and
(c) experimental infants' tolerance for stimulation.
Results showed that music
and multimodal stimulation significantly benefited females' days to
discharge and increased weight gain/day for both males and females. Both
male and female infants' tolerance for stimulation showed marked and
steady increase across the stimulation intervals with females' tolerance
increasing more rapidly than males.
Pediatr Nurs 1998
Nov-Dec;24(6):532-8 Standley JM Center for Music
Research, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA.
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