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Premature babies seem to feel less pain during medical procedures when their mothers talk to them, researchers have found.
Babies who are born very early often have to spend time in neonatal intensive care units and may require several painful clinical procedures. The situation can also mean a long separation from the parents.
Now, researchers say they have found that the sound of a mother’s voice seems to decrease the pain their baby feels during medical procedures.
Dr Manuela Filippa, from the University of Geneva and first author of the study, said the research could not only help parents, stressing that they can play an important role while their baby is in intensive care, but also benefit infants.
“We are trying to find non-pharmacological ways to reduce the pain in these babies,” she said, adding that there was growing evidence that parental contact with premature babies could be important for one. number of reasons, including attachment.
Filippa said the team focused on the voice because it was not always possible for parents to keep their babies in intensive care, when the voice could be a powerful tool for sharing emotions.
Mothers’ voices were particularly studied because infants would have heard it before in the womb. But Filippa said that doesn’t mean a father’s voice can’t become so familiar over time.
“We are [also] conduct studies on fathers’ voice contacts, ”she said.
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, Filippa and his colleagues at the University of Geneva, the Parini hospital in Italy and the University of Valle d’Aosta, report how they examined the pain responses of 20 premature babies in neonatal intensive care to a routine procedure in which the foot is pricked and a few drops of blood drawn.
The team looked at babies’ responses to the procedure three times, each randomly assigned to one of three conditions: mother talking to her child, mother singing to her child, and mother not being. present.
For each occasion, the team recorded three metrics to gauge the level of pain the baby was feeling – the infant’s facial expressions, heart rate, and oxygen levels, the first of which were recorded and then examined by researchers unaware to what condition it pertained to. .
The results reveal that the pain levels considered to be felt by infants dropped, on average, from 4.5 to 3 on a 21-point scale when mothers spoke.
“For this specific age it’s a big change,” Filippa said.
Additionally, the team found that mothers’ speech was associated with significantly increased levels of the hormone oxytocin in saliva samples taken from babies.
“Oxytocin is known to be involved in attachment processes and in maternal sensitivity. It can also protect against the effects of pain, ”said Filippa.
Reduction in pain was less evident when mothers sang, a finding according to Filippa that may reflect the constraints of structure, words, pitch and melody of songs and lullabies.
The study had a number of limitations, including the low number of babies involved. “Of course we have to have more premature babies involved and also other measures, neurological measures, for pain perception,” Filippa said.
But, she added, the results were promising. “The key message is that it is very important to involve parents in the early care of their premature infants, also in difficult situations like painful procedures, using their voice,” she said. “What we know now is that parents can do it and it is beneficial.”
Rebeccah Slater, professor of pediatric neuroscience at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study, said encouraging parents to support their babies during painful procedures using a soft touch and voice has potential benefits for parents and babies.
“While the reduction in pain scores caused by the maternal voice is relatively small, given the ease of implementation and the absence of associated side effects – which can be caused by alternative pain relieving drugs – the voice Kindergarten offers a promising strategy to improve comfort in babies when undergoing essential medical procedures, ”she said.
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