Effects of parental involvement in infant care in neonatal intensive care units: a meta-analysis
Article Category: Original Article
Published Online: Oct 25, 2018
Page range: 207 - 215
Received: Jan 17, 2018
Accepted: Apr 03, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/fon-2018-0028
Keywords
© 2018 Ting-Ting Liu et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Objective
This meta-analysis aimed to examine the effects of parental involvement in infant care in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).
Methods
PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang database, and VIP database were searched till November 2017. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and controlled clinical trials (CCTs) examining the effect of parental involvement in the NICU were considered for inclusion.
Results
We included 10 studies (three RCTs, seven CCTs) with a total of 1,851 participants. The meta-analysis demonstrated that there were no statistically significant differences on nosocomial infection between two groups (risk ratio [RR] = 0.90, 95% CI 0.63–1.30,
Conclusions
Parental involvement in the NICU interventions could not increase the rate of nosocomial infection of neonates, but could improve their weight gain, breast-feeding and parental satisfaction and decrease their readmission. However, since the conclusion of this meta-analysis was drawn based on the limited number of high-quality RCTs, more high-quality studies should be conducted in the future to confirm its positive intervention effects.