Effects of family integrated care on weight gain in extremely preterm infants

BACKGROUND: Family integrated care (FICare) is a model that integrates families as partners in the modern neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) care and which can improve the health outcomes of preterm infants. Our study aimed to ex-plore the effect of FICare on extremely preterm infants.METHODS: Overall, 182 preterm infants with complete data were collected from June 2017 to June 2018 in the Chongq-ing Health Center for Women and Children. Sixty-six of 182 infants were enrolled into the FICare group, and another 66 matched subjects were in the control group. SPSS v. 20.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for statistical analysis. The correlation between each factor and weight gain was analyzed by linear regression.RESULTS: The rate of weight gain during hospitalization (t=4.32), oxygen exposure time (Z=1.967), hospitalization expenses (t=3.03) and the incidence of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) (chi 2=4.805) were higher in the FICare group (P<0.05). Elevated birth weight was associated with a decrease of the weight growth rate (P<0.001). The growth rate of small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infants was higher than normal gestational age infants, P=0.011. Every one year of in-crease in maternal age (P=0.016), each additional day for restoration days of birth weight (P=0.023), and each increment of delta Z score (P<0.001) increased the weight growth rate. The irregular use of hormones reduced the weight growth rate (P=0.023). Compared with the control group, the weight growth rate of FICare group increased (P<0.001).CONCLUSIONS: FICare can significantly improve the weight gain in preterm infants <= 32 weeks during hospitalization.

Automated summary

This study aims to explore the effect of Family Integrated Care (FICare) on extremely preterm infants. The results showed that compared with the control group, infants in the FICare group had a significantly higher rate of weight gain during hospitalization, which can help reduce the occurrence of complications such as infection.