The Effect of Touch Therapy by Mothers on Anthropometric Indices in Preterm Newborns

Introduction & The effect of touch on the growth of newborns has been achieved by educated staff, but touch therapy by mothers, as the most important care provider for their infants, has not been focused in previous studies. In this randomized controlled trail and double blind study which was conducted at Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2010, 60 preterm newborns, which were discharged from neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), were randomly allocated to a control and a touch therapy group (30 newborns in each group). Touch therapy was directly instructed to the mother, also offering guide booklets to the mother. Touch was provided by mother for three periods, 20 minutes each, per day, until term corrected age. In two groups, neonate weight by the electronic weighing scale with an accuracy of ± 10 grams, height with an infant meter, also head and chest circumference with a non-stretchable cloth-tape were measured at the time of discharge following the term corrected age. The statistical data was analyzed by the SPSS software using Kolmogrov Smirnov, Mann-Whitney, Chi-square, Independent T-test and Fisher test. The mean age, type of delivery, level of education, employment and socio-economic status in mothers of the two groups, also weight, sex and other neonate characteristics had no statistical differences. At the term corrected age, there were no differences in mean of height, head and chest circumference between two groups, but the interventional group showed an average weight gain more than the control group, (3373± 270.3, 2905± 372.6 gr) which was statistically significant (p=0.04). It means that neonates in intervention group gained 468 grams more than the control group. Between all anthropometric measurements, only weight was affected by touch therapy. This might be due to the speed of weight gaining compared to increase in height, head and chest circumference.