Kangaroo-Mother Care reduces mortality in low birthweight and preterm babies

Between enrolment and 28 days, Kangaroo-Mother Care (KMC) reduced mortality in low birthweight (LBW) and preterm newborns, says an article published in Frontiers in Pediatrics. 

Skin-to-skin contact between the mother and the newborn, frequent exclusive or nearly exclusive breastfeeding, and early discharge were the original definitions of kangaroo mother care (KMC), which has since been proposed as an alternative to traditional interventions for care of low birthweight infants. KMC is a multifaceted interference for LBW infants, preterm infants, and their parents. In order to increase the use of KMC in clinical practice, Zhen Zhu and colleagues set out to evaluate the advantages of KMC systematically and intuitively from the efficacy of KMC on the clinical outcomes (mortality, sepsis, hospital stay, hypothermia, and exclusive breastfeeding) of LBW and preterm infants in the first 28 days.

For this investigation, papers from the databases PubMed, EBSCO, Web of Science, and the Cochrane library that had been published up through November 2021 were obtained. The main clinical result was death from the time of enrolment to 28 days. The average length of hospital stays, exclusive breastfeeding at the end of the neonatal period, hypothermia, sepsis, and exclusive breastfeeding after discharge were the secondary clinical outcomes.

The key findings of this study were:

There was a meta-analysis that covered 17 RCTs with a total of 17,668 participants. 

The findings of this meta-analysis showed that KMC might lower mortality, the main clinical outcome, between enrolment and 28 days. 

KMC exhibited various degrees of positive effects on sepsis, hypothermia, and the mean length of hospital stay for the secondary clinical outcomes. 

Nevertheless, there was no statistically significant difference in the advantages of exclusive breastfeeding at the end of the newborn period and upon KMC release.

In conclusion, this study demonstrated that KMC was advantageous to LBW and preterm newborns in any condition, including lowering the risk of hypothermia and infection, reducing the average length of hospital stays, and lowering neonatal death.

Reference: 

Zhu, Z., Wang, X., Chen, W., Pei, S., Wang, Q., Guan, H., & Zhu, G. (2023). The efficacy of Kangaroo-Mother care to the clinical outcomes of LBW and premature infants in the first 28 days: A meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. In Frontiers in Pediatrics (Vol. 11). Frontiers Media SA. https://doi.org/10.3389/fped.2023.1067183