View clinical trials related to Infant, Premature.
Filter by:The purpose of this randomized controlled trial is to assess if physical therapy intervention works well to improve motor performance in Bhutanese preterm infants.The main question the study aims to answer is: Will physical therapy intervention improve the motor performance of preterm infants at 3 months of corrected age when compared to the preterm infants receiving standard care of parental education? In this study the motor performance of the preterm infants receiving physical therapy intervention and standard care will be compared.
This study is an experimental randomized controlled study conducted to compare the effect of gentle human touch applied by mother and nurse on pain level during heel blood sampling in preterm infant. The population of the study consists of preterm infants who stay neonatal intensive care unit of state hospital and whose heels blood sampling will be collected. The number of samples for this study was determined as 40 preterm infants with theoretical power of 95%. This study will be started when the researcher informs the families of preterm infants about the research and receives written and oral consent. The preterm infants were divided into 2 groups of 20 preterm infants, including control group who are applied gentle human touch by nurses and the experimental group who are applied gentle human touch by mothers. In the study, the randomization of the sample group was performed through the website named www.randomizer.org. The researcher records physiological measurements (heart rate and oxygen saturation) and the NIPS score before heel lancing. The gentle human touch procedure will be applied to infants in both groups for 10 minutes and then blood will be drawn from the infants' heels. Intervention assessment (KTA, oxygen saturation, and NIPS) will be done after the preterm infant's heel is pricked. The time will be kept when the needle is pricked and the procedure time will be recorded when the blood collection is finished. The time will be kept as soon as the baby starts to cry and the crying time will be recorded when the crying ends. Evaluation of the NIPS/Neonatal Pain Scale will be done by the researcher and a nurse outside the study. Then, inta-rater reliability will be evaluated. After the blood collection, Gentle Human Touch application will be continued for 5 more minutes. At the end of this period, the heart rate, oxygen saturation and NIPS score will be evaluated again.
Babies born early (under 34 weeks) are at risk of developing lung problems after birth. A major reason for this is that the lungs are not fully developed (lung immaturity). One of the important components not yet produced by the lungs is the surfactant, which allows premature babies to breathe without much effort. Very often babies born early need some help with their breathing and also need surfactant. Surfactant is administered through a breathing tube which is placed into the baby's airway. It is important that surfactant is administered early after birth when the baby cannot produce it. Early administration of surfactant provides better clinical outcomes. Currently the decision to give surfactant is based on clinical parameters such as the level of oxygen that your baby requires. Current strategy of waiting for the baby to reach certain oxygen level, may delay in administering surfactant. But recent scientific data from other countries suggest that ultrasound of the chest/lungs can predict early which babies would need surfactant. This would help us to administer surfactant earlier and improve their respiratory outcome. In this study, we want to confirm the value of chest/Lung ultrasound (LU) to predict the need for surfactant in UK population. As a part of the study, we will perform early LU and serial LU in the first few days of life. In this current study, LU images will only be recorded and not used for clinical management.
Periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) is one of the most common brain injuries that occur in preterm infants. Inflammation, hypoxia-ischemia, free oxygen radical formation and excitotoxicity are all known pathogenic mechanisms that mediate this injury. Erythropoietin (EPO) has been shown to be protective against hypoxic-ischemic and inflammatory injuries. During the past decade, recombinant human Epo (rhEpo) has been widely used in preterm infants to prevent or treat the anemia of prematurity, in general, rhEpo has been considered to be safe and well tolerated in preterm infants. EPO was considered not capable of passing through blood-brain-barrier at low dose. Evidence from animal experiments reveals that rhEpo must be given in high doses at the beginning or within a short (up to 6 hours), critical time period after the onset of brain injury to achieve a significant neuroprotective effect. A recent study using high-dose rhEpo (3000 U rhEpo/kg body weight at birth) for neuroprotection in very preterm infants revealed that no signs of adverse effects of early high-dose rhEpo treatment in very preterm infants were identified. Contrary to this, a recent study in PVL of a rat model revealed that using a low dose rhEpo (50-100 U/kg) was effective in the treatment of brain damage induced by hypoxia-ischemia and did not affect normal oligodendrocyte maturity. On this basis, the researchers intent to investigate (1) whether low-dose rhEpo (100 U/kg) or high-dose rhEpo (3,000 U/kg) given to very preterm infants (gestation age < 32 weeks) immediately after birth and subsequently during the first 2 days is safe and possesses neuroprotective properties;(2) whether there are gender differences in response to the hypoxia-ischemic insult and EPO treatment; (3)the pharmacokinetics of low dose and high dose rhEPO. Very preterm infants with gestational age of < 32 weeks and admitted to the NICU are eligible for enrollment.