Behavioral study on long-term effect of kangaroo care for very- low-birth weight infants

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The purpose of this study was to examine the long-term effect of kangaroo care (KC) on mother-infant interaction for very-low-birthweight (VLBW) inants. The subjects were 30 one-and-half-year-old VLBW infants and their mothers who have experienced KC in NICU of Osaka perinatal centre. The other 31 infants and their mothers, who experienced traditional care (TC) in NICU and came out of Osaka perinatal centre before KC intervention started, comprised the control group. Interaction between all the infants and their mothers were observed during developmental testing at one-and-half years of corrected age. Both study groups were similar regarding all the baseline variables. Mothers with previous KC experience expressed sensitive and sympathetic responses more frequently (p<0.005), and expressed negative responses less frequently (p<0.005) to their infants than mothers with previous TC experience. KC mothers laughed more frequently than TC mothers (p<0.01). KC infants didn't show any intensive crying while 19.4% of TC infants showed it, and smiled more frequently (p=0.1) than TC infants. These results suggest that the KC in NICU might be a useful intervention technique to develop secure attachment between mothers and their VLBW infants, enable mothers to be more relaxed, and enable infants to be more active during such a strange testing situation at one-and-half year of age.