Kangaroo care

Something I learned today

I read an interesting article today while doing “continuing medical education” (CME).  I just wanted to share this one.  They studied kangaroo care and whether it helped reduce pain for procedures in premature infants.  Evidently they already know it works for term infants.  They also studied whether Moms or Dads worked better.

For those of you who don’t know, kangaroo care is a method of caring for infants involving skin to skin contact between the baby and the care giver.  The baby has a diaper on and is placed against Mom or Dad’s skin.  It is supposed to help with bonding, breast feeding, growth and development.

There were a lot of technical details in the article I read.  I won’t bore you with them.  If you want, you can refer to the article. The study was done by Johnston and colleagues and is reported in the September issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. 

The results were interesting.  All the babies were comforted by being with their parents during the procedure.  The procedure was having their blood drawn from their foot – a “heel stick”.  They cried less, their heart rates went up less, and the heart rate returned to normal faster.  FYI, Moms did just a little bit better than Dads. 

I was impressed that we are studying ways to make painful procedures more comfortable for the little ones.  Aww….

You learn something new every day.