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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.
Chief inventor and occupational therapist Liisa Holsti said the Calmer device is a rectangular platform that replaces a mattress inside an incubator and is programmed with information on heart rate and movement breathing of 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 exposed to multiple procedures, such as taking blood, which can be performed multiple times by day for several months.
A randomized clinical trial of 49 infants born prematurely between 27 and 36 weeks of pregnancy at the Women's Hospital and BC Health Center concluded that Calmer provides similar benefits to human contact by reducing pain when blood is taken.
The results of the study, completed between October 2014 and February 2018, were published this week in the journal Pain Reports.
Holsti, Canada Research Chair in Neonatal Health and Development, said Holsti. 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 did not design this image to look like a human being," she added. Her work since 1985 in neonatal intensive care units, where she taught parents how to support their baby at home after leaving the hospital, sparked interest in badessing infant pain and trying to relieve it.
"Every year, about 30,000 babies are born prematurely in Canada alone. I therefore hope that 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 to be. 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 they are now flourishing at almost a year.
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 have pain as newborns keep this memory later and react differently when they have pain experiences later in life," he said.
– Follow @ CamilleBains1 on Twitter.
Camille Bains, Canadian Press
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