Every year 15 million premature babies are born and for decades it has been advancing in its care so that more and more of these little heroes get ahead without sequels. The importance of the kangaroo method for premature babies or breastfeeding was already known and now a study has shown that providing pleasant tactile sensations to babies allows better brain development.
On the other hand, the more physical pain the premature babies have felt as a result of punctures or other interventions in their stay in the ICU of neonates, their cerebral response to other mild tactile stimuli is less, as if the sense of touch was impaired by these procedures or as if the brain had not developed following a normal evolution.
The research has been carried out by specialists from the United States and published this week in the journal "Current Biology". Its authors also found that, the more premature a baby is, the lower its response to soft touch.
In Babies and more, stroking, hugging and talking to premature babies is key to improving their developmentThus it is important to enhance pleasant tactile sensations in the newborn, in order to mold and promote the development of your brain. And we often take into account other senses of the baby, such as sight or hearing, but touch also provides many of the first learning experiences.
The scientists recorded by electroencephalograms the brain responses to soft touch (breaths in the palm of the hand) of more than a hundred full-term and premature newborns about to be discharged from the hospital. The responses of the cerebral cortex in relation to the painful or pleasant stimuli during the stay in the ICU, recorded in their history, were taken into account.
Pleasant stimuli: breastfeeding, skin-to-skin contact, massages or occupational therapy sessions.
Painful sensations: injections, punctures, tube insertions or minor surgical interventions.
The sense of babies who had suffered painful sensations was affected, say that there could have been a kind of "immunization" having felt pain. And if we thought that the supply of sugar or medicines to mitigate the pain of these procedures would cancel this result, this is not the case according to the study.
The touch of premature baby
They may see little or nothing at birth, but premature babies already have all their touch receptors underway. However, while in the womb the experiences would be the heat of the amniotic fluid, touching itself, the cord, the uterine walls ... in the hospital the sensations multiply and too many times are not pleasant.
In the full stage of neuronal development, it is necessary to ensure that the baby does not suffer inappropriate stimuli to prevent the nervous system from suffering and, as far as possible, develop normally, without strong impacts.
In Babies and more Born prematurely, an arrival in the world ahead of time for which no one is preparedTherefore, that the baby's family is close is very important, providing the premature as many positive stimuli as possible. Aggressive medicine doesn't do them any good and they work on less invasive alternatives and as long as the father can be with his baby, touching him, providing heat, food ... it will be better.
Not all neonatal ICUs have the same policy regarding the entry or stay of parents with their babies, but certainly more and more should take into account these evidences that indicate that, taking appropriate precautions given the fragility of premature babies, The best thing is that they are close to them.
In the end, it is clear that children who spend more time in skin-to-skin contact with their parents go home earlier because they evolve better than those who spend less time and are more in the incubator. Premature babies need to feel touched, pampered and not sore.
