View clinical trials related to Premature Birth.
Filter by:The purpose is to describe the level of visual maturation of premature newborns at term equivalent age. The secondary purpose is to determine factors associated to an altered level of visual maturation, through an exploratory approach.
Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a disorder of development of the neural retina and its vasculature that may impact vision in vulnerable preterm neonates for a lifetime. This study utilizes new technology to determine visual and neurological development of very preterm infants in the intensive care nursery, during a period of rapid growth of the retina, optic nerve and brain. The long-term goal of this study is to help improve preterm infant health care via objective bedside imaging and analysis that characterizes early critical indicators of poor vision, neurological development and ROP, which will rapidly translate to better early intervention and improved future vision care.
The purpose of this study is to correlate the composite PIPP-R (Premature Infant Pain Profile-Revised) scale and the parasympathetic nervous system (heart rate variability).
A key function of our brain is to identify temporal structures in the environment and use them to form expectations. These expectations allow us to plan and organize our behavior towards changes in the environment, and optimize the use of our attentional and motor resources. They also allow us to establish harmonious social interactions, coordinating us with our interlocutor during an exchange. Our ability to form temporal expectations seems to emerge very early but the development of this process is unknown. We only know that a set of basic skills, probably related to that ability, are present from birth. This suggests that temporal processing capabilities emerge during the prenatal period, but this has not been studied. The objective of this project is to study preterm infants brain's ability to process the intervals between stimuli and to form expectations on that basis.
In Alberta, nearly one in every twelve babies is born too soon (preterm). Preterm babies are at greater risk for breathing and feeding problems, as well as infections, than babies born on their due date (full term). As a result, parents must leave their preterm babies in the hospital to fully develop and become healthy enough to take home. When it is time for discharge, parents are often not ready to look after their baby because they may have limited involvement in the care of their baby in hospital. In addition to the distress and costs to parents of having a baby in hospital, health system costs are also increased the longer a baby is in hospital. The purpose of this project is to test a new way to integrate parents into the care of their baby through a program called Family Integrated Care (FICare). In FICare, parents are educated and supported by nurses to provide care for their baby; nurses and doctors still provide intravenous medications and medical procedures. FICare has been tested in Ontario and shows promise as a better model of care for the small percentage of babies born more than 8 weeks early, who have to spend a long time in hospital. Now the investigators want to test FICare with the greater percentage of preterm babies who are born 4 to 8 weeks early to see if parents are able to take their baby home sooner, and if their babies are healthier. The investigators also want to know if FICare can reduce distress for parents. The investigators propose to test FICare in Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) in Alberta by implementing FICare in half the Level II NICUs and comparing the outcomes with the other Level II NICUs who do not use FICare. If FICare improves outcomes for preterm babies and their parents, the investigators will implement it in all Level II NICUs. In Alberta, the investigators want the best quality care for our most vulnerable babies and their parents. This project is aligned with Alberta's Health Research and Innovation Strategy priority of wellness at every age (child and maternal health), and with Alberta Health Services' quality of care goals to increase efficiency, effectiveness, appropriateness, and acceptability of health care services delivery.
Numerous experimental and clinical studies have shown that preterm neonates are particularly sensitive to stress. Preterm neonates routinely undergo painful invasive procedures. Each situation causing pain or discomfort can alter their development and cause short term cardiovascular consequences but also have long-term neurocognitive influences. Repetitive procedural pain can also lead to changes in the pain sensitivity threshold therefore. The most common painful procedures are lancing for blood glucose testing. In adults, infants and term newborns, forearm blood glucose testing has been demonstrated to be less painful than conventional sites (heel, fingers). But data is lacking in preterm neonates. The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate a significant reduction in pain response during forearm blood lancing vs conventional sites (fingers, heel) in preterm neonates born up to 32 weeks gestation. This study is an interventional multicenter (3 centers), randomized, double bind trial with a cross over assignment. 60 premature neonates born between 23 to 32 weeks. Gestation with a postnatal age less than 72 hours that will undergo at least 3 blood glucose pricks will be included. The different sites will be randomly successively tested.
Enterocolitis necrotizing (ECUN) is a common and serious gastrointestinal disease in premature infants. The diagnosis of ECUN based on clinical and radiological criteria. The abdomen plain film to date is the reference examination to confirm or refute the diagnosis. Indeed, the presence of pathognomonic signs (pneumatosis, aéroportie) on the abdomen of cliché can confirm the diagnosis. The prognostic value of these radiographic findings is currently controversial. Abdominal ultrasound is a test whose possibilities in diagnostic and prognostic term began to be considered for some years. It also has other advantages, including that of not being a radiating examination. Studies on the prognostic value of abdominal ultrasound are rather few. Moreover, they involve a series of heterogeneous patients in terms of gestational age. Or the pathophysiology of ECUN in children born at term and in children born prematurely is not the same. The objective is to study prospectively the prognostic contribution of abdominal ultrasound in the ECUN in premature under 33SA.
The objective of the study was to evaluated the feasibility and reproducibility of the measurement of lung elasticity report / fetal liver according to gestational age in a group of patients with a normal course of pregnancy and in a group of Patients at risk of preterm delivery.
This is a pilot study is to test a wireless, skin-sensor device against current technology in the NICU to monitor vitals
Prematurity is the first cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity worldwide. The threat of premature delivery (TPD), the most important complication and the leading cause of hospitalization during pregnancy has multiple origins which are seldom precisely identified. The standard medical examination for the detection of patients with TPD is the endovaginal ultrasonographic examination of uterine cervix (echography). Gynaecologists focus on the use of a new low-cost diagnostic tool based on optical imaging technologies with polarized light. The polarization is the spatio-temporal orientation of a wave's electric field. This light property, invisible with the naked eye, is sensitive to the morphological transformations of a tissue and the orientation of collagen fibers. Such tool would not require an extensive training and should provide an objective quantitative result with a sensitivity and specificity greater than conventional ultrasonography. This would be a considerable contribution to the health care of TPD, a real societal problem in Belgium, Europe and all over the world. The POLARMAP project proposes the possibility to observe in vivo and during pregnancy, the structural evolution, the density and the orientation changes of collagen fibers. A relevant scoring of collagen status might provide an alternative, and potentially objective and accurate quantifier of the time left before delivery.