Introduction: About 13 million preterm deliveries occur per year around the world, with an overall incidence of about nine percent. Preterm neonate is the birth of a baby at less than 37 week’s of gestational age. More than half a century, studies reported about strong association between preterm birth and development disorders. So, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of tactile kinetic stimulation on physical development, and motor development in preterm neonates.
Methodology: This study was a clinical trial with two intervention and control groups that conducted with pretest and post test. Among all of Iranian neonates healthy and preterm of Amiralmomenin hospital neonatal unit of Semnan, whit 32-37 gestational age, 40 neonates selected purposefully and divided to experimental and control groups (20 person each group). Then, mothers of Experimental group conducted tactile kinetic stimulation on neonates to Completion of fetal period (40 weeks gestation) for 20 minutes and three times a day whereas, control group received only usual care. In order to measure the physical development it is used of weight, height, head circumference, chest, abdominal, arm and hip circumferences. Also, motor development assessment of neonates, after the intervention and after 4 months of intervention was performed by using Peabody test. To analyze the data, Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and mixed ANOVA were used.
Results: Results showed that weight gain and circumference of arm and hip in experimental group neonate’s increased significantly, whereas despite the increase in height, head circumference, chest and abdomen circumference of neonates in the experimental group, this increase was not statistically significant (P≥0.0071). In addition, the motor development of preterm neonates in the experimental group, after the intervention and after 4 months of completion of the intervention compared to the control group showed a significant improvement (p≤0.05).
Discussion: Taking the results into consideration it can be concluded that tactile kinetic stimulation can be an effective and non-drug way to improve some of the main indicators of physical development of preterm neonates. Moreover, such stimulation during the critical period of infancy, creates durable and lasting effect on motor development of them.