Other content tagged: Kangaroo Care
Not a privilege but a right – Kangaroo Mother Care is a lifesaving intervention
Munich, June 2024 — Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is a care practice that benefits not only newborns and their families but also healthcare providers and hospitals. KMC centres care around the needs of the infant, empowers families, mitigates the workload for medical professionals, and saves resources in often overburdened healthcare systems. It includes continuous and prolonged skin-to-skin contact, exclusive breastfeeding, and timely discharge from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Definition of Kangaroo…
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Mother-Newborn Couplet Care: Recommendations to implement and improve coupled care from Nordic practice
As preterm newborns and mothers have different medical needs, they are usually treated on different wards. However, the concept of mother-newborn coupled care breaks with that tradition and instead keeps them together throughout their hospitalization. This allows for immediate skin-to-skin contact after birth, a higher quality of care, and lower rates of morbidity and mortality for the infant. The concept is already well-established in Swedish and Finish maternity hospitals and serves as a…
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Kangaroo mother care: new resources released by WHO
Kangaroo mother care (KMC) significantly improves survival and health outcomes for preterm and low birthweight babies, compared to clinical stabilization in a more ‘high-tech’ incubator or warmer. To support preterm and low birthweight babies benefitting from this lifesaving technique, which includes ongoing skin-to-skin contact and exclusive breastfeeding, WHO released two new resources, with EFCNI having the great honour of contributing to this landmark report with its expertise from the parent community. Kangaroo mother…
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Mothers’ experiences of early skin-to-skin contact vs. traditional separation approach after a very preterm birth
Researchers in Norway explored experiences of mothers of very preterm children regarding early skin-to-skin contact vs. a traditional separation approach. Mothers benefited from skin-to-skin contact as it ensured them the vitality of the infant, promoted bonding and gave them an overall positive, emotionally overwhelming experience. In the last decades, contact between mother and child immediately after birth has changed. Nowadays, skin-to-skin contact (SSC) is mostly promoted, which also applies to caesarean sections. According to the…
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Increasing Early Skin-to-Skin in Extremely Low Birthweight Infants
Although the benefits of skin-to-skin care (SSC) for preterm and low birthweight infants are known to the neonatal community, some health centres still struggle with implementation. To increase SSC within the first 72 hours of life among extremely low birthweight (ELBW) infants, a multidimensional approach was chosen at a Level IV university-based regional intensive care nursery (ICN). SSC has many benefits for mothers and infants, especially those born preterm. Previous studies showed that in…
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Visual function in preterm infants: Can early interventions help to improve visual function?
The environment and the procedures at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) can be stressful for preterm infants. Thus, brain development might be decelerated, increasing the possibility for visual impairments. However, the clinical trial by Italian researchers has shown that early interventions by parents can have a positive effect on visual functions. Previous research suggests that multisensory stimulation, especially infant massages, can help with brain development and visual maturation in preterm infants. The randomized…
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Kangaroo Care Challenge in Hungary
A guest article by Livia Nagy Bonnard from the Hungarian Parent Organisation Right(s) beside you! May 2018 was passing by in our Association in the spirit of kangaroo care. We invited and had the pleasure to welcome Professor Nils Bergman, one of the most famous researchers and the ambassador of kangaroo mother care (KMC) in Hungary. After successful events in 2016 and 2017 we organised a Kangaroo Care Challenge amongst several Hungarian Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) on the occasion…
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