1. Failing to meet relative humidity targets for incubated neonates causes higher heat loss and metabolic costs in the first week of life
- Author
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Romain Erbani, Estelle Durand, Anaïs Glusko-Charlet, Elodie Haraux, Armand Lahana, Loïc Dégrugilliers, and Pierre Tourneux
- Subjects
Incubators, Infant ,Pediatrics ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Neonatal intensive care unit ,Nursing Procedures ,03 medical and health sciences ,Nursing care ,0302 clinical medicine ,Animal science ,Neonatal Nursing ,030225 pediatrics ,Humans ,Medicine ,Relative humidity ,Prospective Studies ,030212 general & internal medicine ,business.industry ,Infant, Newborn ,food and beverages ,Heat losses ,Incubator ,Humidity ,General Medicine ,Metabolic cost ,Metabolic control analysis ,Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health ,Intensive Care, Neonatal ,business ,Infant, Premature - Abstract
Aim Frequent nursing procedures can modify a newborn infant's thermal environment when their incubator is opened. This study evaluated the impact of relative humidity on preterm infants in closed incubators and calculated their heat loss and additional metabolic cost. Methods We studied 45 preterm infants born before 32+0 weeks, nursed at the neonatal intensive care unit at Amiens University Hospital, France from January 2009 to November 2011. Their body, skin and air temperatures and the incubator's relative humidity were continuously recorded from days 1-8 of life and the differences between the measured and target relative humidity were calculated. Body heat loss was also calculated. Results On day one, the measured relative humidity (68.7 ±1.0%) was significantly lower than the target relative humidity (75%, p
- Published
- 2017