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VANCOUVER – Researchers in British Columbia have developed a "robot" that helps reduce pain in premature babies by simulating skin-to-skin contact with a parent who may not be available 24 hours a day in a neonatal intensive care.
Senior inventor and occupational therapist Liisa Holsti said that the Calmer device is a rectangular platform that replaces a mattress in an incubator and that is programmed with information about heart rate and breathing movement. a parent.
The robotic part of Calmer is that the platform goes up and down to mimic breathing, and a heartbeat is heard through a microphone on the outside of the device, Holsti said, adding that A pad on the top resembled a skin-like surface.
The goal is to help babies cope with pain by touch instead of taking as many medications as possible when they are exposed to multiple procedures, such as taking blood, which can be performed several times a day for several months.
A randomized clinical trial of 49 infants born prematurely between 27 and 36 weeks of pregnancy at BC Women's Hospital and Health Center concluded that Calmer provides similar benefits to human contact by reducing pain when babies are being harvested some blood.
The results of the study, completed between October 2014 and February 2018, were published this week in the journal Pain Reports.
The contact of a parent or caregiver is the most soothing and the Calmer is not meant to replace it, said Holsti, Canada Research Chair in Neonatal Health and Development. . She worked with four other researchers on the project involving a prototype built by engineering students from the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
"We deliberately decided not to look like a human being," she said, adding that her work since 1985 in neonatal intensive care units, where she taught parents how to support their baby at home after their departure from the hospital, sparked interest in badessing the infant's pain and trying to relieve it.
"Each year, about 30,000 babies are born prematurely in Canada alone, so I hope we will help all these babies with Calmer."
Holsti explained that nurses often covered the head, arms and legs of a child in a curled position during the blood collection, but the study suggests that the device would save near the ## 147 ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # 39, half a million dollars in personnel costs each year. neonatal intensive care unit where the study was conducted.
Lauren Mathany, whose twin daughters, Hazel and Isla, were born 24 months after her pregnancy and weighed less than 2 pounds each, said that even if Calmer's research had been completed by then, it would have been a rebaduring tool for her and his wife. when they went home to sleep or take a shower after spending a lot of time hugging and touching their skin.
"The NICU is the most difficult place, it challenges you in every way," she said.
Methany's children spent more than four months in the hospital and were medically fragile when they were bought at home, but now have almost a year of success.
Dr. Ran Goldman, pain researcher at the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute on pain for 20 years, but who has not participated in the Calmer study, said that the device was promising because it is now better understood that healing is delayed when pain is an integral part of the research. treatment of an infant.
Scientists in the late 1960s thought babies did not feel pain, but there is growing understanding that they are more sensitive than older children or adults because their pain-inhibiting mechanisms are not fully developed, said Goldman. emergency doctor at BC Children 's Hospital.
"Research has shown that babies who suffered pain as newborns kept this memory alive later and reacted differently when they felt the pain later in life," he said.
– Follow @ CamilleBains1 on Twitter.
Camille Bains, Canadian Press
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