Gere Sisay, Berhane Yemane, Worku Alemayehu
Department of Nursing, College of Health Sciences, Arsi University, Asella, Ethiopia.
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Addis Continental Institute of Public Health, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Int J Pediatr. 2021 Apr 26;2021:8873169. doi: 10.1155/2021/8873169. eCollection 2021.
Skin-to-skin contact (SSC) is one of the critical components of kangaroo mother care (KMC), which is an intervention to enhance the survival of low birth weight (LBW) and/or premature infants in low-income settings. Chest-to-chest (CC) contact has been practiced widely; however, mothers face practical challenges to continuously provide CC-SSC. Hence, we assessed the efficacy of chest-to-back (CB) SSC as an alternative to CC-SSC in regulating body temperature for LBW and/or premature babies in Ethiopia. We applied a noninferiority clinical trial among LBW and/or premature infants admitted to a referral hospital neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Ethiopia. The study randomized the infants into two crossover arms; arm 1 applied first CB-SSC followed by CC-SSC, and arm 2 applied first CC-SSC followed by CB-SSC. The outcome measure was a change in skin temperature. We used a linear mixed-effect model for analysis. The result showed no statistically significant difference in the mean temperature between the comparison arms. In conclusion, we found that the CB-SSC was not inferior to the CC-SSC in regulating body temperature of the babies. Thus, CB-SSC can be further investigated as an alternative to CC-SSC in the kangaroo care model in low-income settings.
皮肤接触（SSC）是袋鼠式护理（KMC）的关键组成部分之一，袋鼠式护理是一种旨在提高低收入环境中低出生体重（LBW）和/或早产儿存活率的干预措施。胸对胸（CC）接触已被广泛应用；然而，母亲们在持续提供CC-SSC时面临实际挑战。因此，我们评估了背靠背（CB）SSC作为CC-SSC的替代方式，对埃塞俄比亚低出生体重和/或早产儿体温调节的效果。我们在埃塞俄比亚一家转诊医院的新生儿重症监护病房（NICU）对低出生体重和/或早产儿进行了一项非劣效性临床试验。该研究将婴儿随机分为两个交叉组；第1组先采用CB-SSC，然后采用CC-SSC，第2组先采用CC-SSC，然后采用CB-SSC。结果指标是皮肤温度的变化。我们使用线性混合效应模型进行分析。结果显示，比较组之间的平均温度没有统计学上的显著差异。总之，我们发现CB-SSC在调节婴儿体温方面并不劣于CC-SSC。因此，在低收入环境的袋鼠护理模式中，CB-SSC可作为CC-SSC的替代方式作进一步研究。
