Emollient therapy for preterm newborn infants – evidence from the developing world

BMC Public Health

Review

Rehana A Salam¹  Jai K Das¹  Zulfiqar A Bhutta²  Gary L Darmstadt³ 

[1] Division of Women & Child Health, The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan;Division of Women & Child Health, The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan;Global Child Health and Policy, Centre for Global Child Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada;Global Development Division, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA, USA;

关键词: Mean Difference;    Neonatal Mortality;    Preterm Neonate;    Hospital Acquire Infection;    Preterm Newborn;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-13-S3-S31

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionApplication of emollients is a widespread traditional newborn care practice in many low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and may have the potential to decrease infection and consequent mortality in preterm neonates.MethodsWe systematically reviewed literature published up to December 2012 to identify studies describing the effectiveness of emollient therapy. We used a standardized abstraction and grading format to estimate the effect of emollient therapy by applying the standard Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG) rules.ResultsWe included seven studies and one unpublished trial in this review. Topical emollient therapy significantly reduced neonatal mortality by 27% (RR: 0.73, 95% CI: 0.56, 0.94) and hospital acquired infection by 50% (RR: 0.50, 95% CI: 0.36, 0.71). There were significant increases in weight (g) (MD: 98.04, 95% CI: 42.64, 153.45) and weight gain (g/kg/day) (MD: 1.57, 95% CI: 0.79, 2.36), whereas the impacts were non-significant for length and head circumference.ConclusionEmollient therapy is associated with improved weight gain, reduced risk of infection and associated newborn mortality in preterm neonates and is a potentially promising intervention for use in low resource settings. Large scale effectiveness trials are required to further assess the impact of this intervention.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Salam et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.