DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5963495
title: Early parenting intervention promotes 24-month psychomotor development in preterm children

description: <strong>Introduction</strong>. In the present study, we report on the effects of an early NICU psychoeducational parenting intervention including both mothers and fathers on the psychomotor outcome of preterm infants at 24 months of CA. <strong>Methods</strong>. Between January 2015 and December 2016, 42 preterm children from the NICU of the Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia, Italy, and their parents were enrolled in this study. All preterm infants with gestational age ≤32 weeks or birth weight ≤1500 grams were eligible for the study. Subjects were not considered eligible to the study if at least one parent was unable to converse in Italian, had psychiatric morbidities or reported alcohol/drug abuse, was less than 18 years old, and if the infants had any genetic syndrome. Twenty-one children and their parents were allocated to the early intervention arm, whereas twenty-one were allocated to the care as usual arm. The following socio-demographic variables were collected: infants’ sex, gestational age, birthweight, Apgar score at the first and fifth minute, parental age and educational level measured as years of study. The clinical characterization of the children included the following variables: vaginal or Caesarean delivery, being small for gestational age, intrauterine growth restriction, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, retinopathy of prematurity, periventricular leukomalacia, ultrasound scan results and clinical outcomes of neurological examinations at discharge, term-equivalent age and 3 months of corrected age. Parents were asked to complete the parental closeness diary starting from the day of enrollment up to discharge, to control for differences related to the amount of skin-to-skin and holding between the two groups. Mothers and fathers completed the diary separately. The parental closeness diary allows the collection of quantitative data on the presence of parents, time spent holding the infant and time spent in skin-to-skin contact. A clinician blind to the random allocation administered Griffiths Mental Developmental Scale (GMDS) at 24 months of corrected age. A standardized developmental quotient (DQ) score (range: 50-150) is obtained for each domain (mean= 100, standard deviation= 16) and for the global score (mean= 100, standard deviation =12). Both groups were compared for socio-demographic and clinical variables as well as for holding and skin-to-skin percentage scores by means of pair-wise mean comparisons, non-parametric Mann-Whitney test and chi-square test. General linear models were used to assess the presence of significant group differences in the total and domain DQ scores of the GMDS. <strong>Results</strong>. A significant difference emerged for the total GMDS score (t(40)=2.40,P= .02) Children from parents in the early intervention arm had higher global DQ compared to those in the care as usual arm. Moreover, a significant multivariate effect was detected (F(5,36)=4.49, P=.003, η2p =0.38). Significant univariate differences emerged for two domains: personal-social (F(1,40) =14.93, P&lt;.001,η2p=0.27) and hearing-speech (F (1,40)=5.36, P=.026,η2p=0.12). For both the domains, children of parents in the early intervention group had higher DQ scores compared to those in the care as usual group.
description: Funding; Ricerca Corrente 2016-2020, Ministry of Helath (Italy)