View clinical trials related to Prematurity.
Filter by:Background: Preterm infants are at risk for developing altered trajectories of cognitive, social, and linguistic competences compared to a term population. This is mainly due to medical and environmental factors, as they are exposed to an atypical auditory environment and, simultaneously, to long periods of early separation from their parents. The short-term effects of Early Vocal Contact (EVC) on an infant's early stability have been investigated, but currently, there is limited evidence of its impact on the infant's autonomic nervous system maturation, as indexed by the heart rate variability, as well as on its long-term impact on infant neurodevelopment. This multi-centric study aims to investigate the effects of EVC on a preterm infant's physiology, neurobehaviour, and development. Methods: Eighty stable preterm infants, born at 25 to 32 weeks and 6 days gestational age, without specific abnormalities, will be selected and randomized to either an intervention or a control group. The intervention group will receive EVC: mothers talking and singing to their preterm infants for 10 minutes thrice a week for 2 weeks. Mothers in the control group will be encouraged to spend the same amount of time next to the incubator, observing the infant's behaviour through a standard cluster of indicators. Infants will be assessed at baseline, at the end of the intervention, at term equivalent age, and at 3, 6, 12- and 24-months corrected age, with a battery of physiological, neurobehavioral, and developmental measures. Discussion: Early interventions in the neonatal intensive care unit have shown important effects on the neurodevelopment of preterm infants, lowering the negative long-term effects of an atypical auditory and interactional environment. This study will provide new insights into the mother-infant early contact as protective intervention against the sequelae of prematurity during the sensitive period of development. An early intervention, such as EVC, is intuitive and easy to implement in the daily care of preterm infants. However, its long-term effects on infant neurodevelopment and on maternal sensitivity and stress still need accurate investigations.
The purpose of this study is to develop biocompatible wireless electronic devices that will allow continuous, non-invasive hemodynamic and physiology measurements in the ICU.
Despite a greater understanding of NEC physiopathology, modest progress has been done in terms of intervention and prevention of the disease over the past three decades, being the mortality rate unchanged. Investigators intend to leverage our knowledge and technical expertise developed with fetal enteroids to further investigate the processes leading to NEC by deriving and performing functional studies on human intestinal enteroids generated from intestinal resection for therapeutic reasons in NEC and non-NEC patients 1. Generate a tissue biorepository composed of: enteroids and other lamina propria cells 2. Comparative studies of the gene expression profile of tissue, epithelial enteroids and underlying lamina propria of NEC, non-NEC, hypoxic and non-hypoxic infants 3. In vitro functional studies for the evaluation of critical factors in NEC pathophysiology 4. In vitro functional studies to identify the activation of processes leading to intestinal epithelium necroptosis and/or apoptosis in bacteria challenged and hypoxic conditions 5. Correlative studies of the impact of perinatal variables on the intestinal barrier functionality at baseline and challenged with pathogens 6. In vitro comparison of the intestinal barrier functionality in infants complicated by condition of prenatal hypoxia versus non hypoxic infants 7. Validation the NEC enteroids as an in vitro model for the identification of treatments and prevention of NEC
Electric Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a lung monitoring technique based on the injection of small currents and voltage measurements using electrodes on the skin surface generating cross-sectional images representing impedance change in a slice of the thorax. It is a real time, radiation free, non-invasive and portable. Neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) is a respiratory disorder resulting from immaturity of the lung structure and lack of surfactant. It is one the most common conditions in premature infants. Many of these infants require either invasive or non-invasive respiratory support. The goal of the study is to investigate the dynamic changes in pulmonary aeration during assisted breathing in very low birthweight preterm infants using pulmonary electrical impedance tomography. Currently most widely used methods to assess respiratory lung function are either invasive and/or indirect (ABG, pulse oximetry, transcutaneous pCO2 measurement), lacks temporal resolution (lung ultrasound) or emit ionizing radiation (CT). EIT provides information on regional lung aeration without the aforementioned shortcomings.
Babies born very early (at less than 32 weeks) usually need help to breath right at birth, also called neonatal resuscitation. Healthcare providers (HCPs) are specially trained to provide this help. HCPs uses information about the baby's condition, such heart rate and oxygen levels, to decide whether they giving the baby effective help, or whether other actions are needed. It can be very stressful for even experienced HCPs to interpret all this data, coordinate a team, make decisions, and perform specialized skills all at the same time. More recently, new ways of monitoring how a baby is doing neonatal resuscitation has been studied. Respiratory function monitoring (RFM) is a machine that can measure how much air is going into the lungs. This is important as too much air can lead to lung damage, while too little air means that the baby isn't breathing effectively. Another measure is called cerebral near-infrared spectroscopy (cNIRS), which measures oxygen levels in the brain using a probe placed on the forehead. Providing the right amount of oxygen to the most vulnerable organ - the brain - can be important in lowering the risk for injuries to the brain such as brain bleeding. While these machines give us more information, it can also make it even harder for HCPs to focus on the task, adding more complexity to making decisions, adding to their workload, and causing more stress. To study the effect RFM and cNIRS may have on how affects HCPs workload and stress, the investigators will study HCPs self-reported workload during three time periods - first, doing resuscitations only using basic information (Group 1: heart rate, oxygen levels, direct observations of the baby), second, adding RFM (Group 2), finally adding both RFM and cNIRS (Group 3). A survey called NASA Task Load Index will be used to study HCPs workload. On a small number of teams, the investigators will also track where the leader of the team is looking using eye-tracking glasses, how stressed the leader is by measuring their heart rate, skin sweat, and pupil dilation. Finally, the investigators will collect some information about the baby's resuscitation and hospital stay.
Early vascular aging has its origins in fetal and neonatal life. The NEOVASC clinical trial aims to determine the effects of an exclusive human milk diet in extremely preterm infants on long-term cardiovascular health.
It is reported that the standard method for fortification of human milk (HM) overestimates the energy and protein densities of HM (Macedo MHNP 2018), thus originating infant undernutrition (Macedo AJP 2018). The target fortification, based on analysis of HM composition, is considered the gold-standard method (Rochow 2015, McLeod 2016). This observational mixed cohort study aims to assess if very preterm infants fed HM with target fortification have greater growth during hospital stay and better body composition at term post-menstrual age (PMA), than those fed HM with standard fortification.
Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) usually present coexisting problems in emotion and behavior regulation, similarly as premature children with communication or socialization difficulties. Caring for children with neurodevelopmental difficulties is an important stressor for parents. Therefore, it is essential that families are offered evidence-based interventions at an early stage within the public health service. Group therapy is a cost-effective intervention that can help parents of children diagnosed with autism and those born prematurely. The Incredible Years - ASLD program is an example of this sort of therapy, consisting of a group intervention for parents of preschool children with a diagnosis of ASD or Language Delay. In Spain, group interventions for children with ASD and preterm children presenting with Language Delay are scarce in the public health service. The Incredible Years - ASLD program has not been translated into Spanish and it has not been previously implemented in our country. The Incredible Years - ASLD group intervention will be carried out in three public Healthcare centers. It is intended to recruit 72 patients diagnosed with ASD or premature children with communication or socialization difficulties, which will be randomized to an Intervention Group or to Treatment as Usual (TAU) Group. The Intervention Group will receive fourteen sessions of the Incredible Years - ASLD program in addition to Treatment as Usual (TAU). In terms of clinical implications, this randomized pilot study could demonstrate the feasibility of implementing this intervention in the regular clinical settings within the Spanish public health service and could be a first step for future controlled studies that demonstrate its effectiveness.
Improved survival of very preterm newborn population during the last decades has challenged us neonatologists to study and improve nutritional practices including vitamin D (VitD) supplementation. However, long term outcome in this aspect has not been researched in well documented preterm populations. As VitD has receptors in almost all human cells it modulates growth of many organs. Therefore I start to assess VitD supplementation practices and later health outcome (bones, teeth, muscles, heart, lungs) in two preterm population cohorts cared in Oulu University Hospital at the age of 5 years and 24 years (born 2014-2017 and 1994-1997).
The goal of this project is to investigate the acceptability, feasibility and fidelity of an innovative NICU rehabilitation program that will include six multimodal, gestational age (GA) appropriate, parent-administered interventions (vocal soothing, scent exchange, comforting touch, kangaroo care, infant massage and physical therapy). Using the general movement assessment (GMA) instrument, the investigators will determine the effects of this program on short-term motor outcomes (general movements (GMs), cranial nerves, posture, movements, tone, and reflexes) in premature infants (≤32 week's gestation and/or ≤1500 grams birthweight) identified as at-risk for CP. The short-term motor outcomes will be measured using the GMA, the Test of Infant Motor Performance (TIMP) and the Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) instruments. This novel program will be applied during the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) hospitalization when the brain is highly plastic and actively developing with the goal to mitigate severity of brain injury and its impact on development.