Pediatrics & Therapeutics
Open Access

Abstract

Massage Therapy in Preterm Infants

Fatima F Aly and Ghulam Murtaza

Premature infants are at greater risk for long-term growth, health, social-emotional, behavioral, motor and neurodevelopmental problems. Progress has been made in the care of preterm infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) over the last 40 years. More recent research has shown that massage of preterm infants while in the NICU has beneficial effects on growth and neuro-developmental outcomes. The massaged infants have greater weight gain, fewer hospital days, fewer stress behaviors, and accelerated brain maturation; all with no adverse outcomes. Despite all these probable benefits, only one third of NICU’s offer massage therapy to their preterm infants or provide
information and/or instructions to parents/caregivers about massage therapy for their preterm infants.
The case reported is of 30 weeks 5 days preterm infant who, post discharge at day 54 of life, had parentally administered whole body massage once/day for a minimum of 3/week. The child appears to have accelerated growth on all three modalities with full catch up growth by 6 months of life. This is the first study of its kind to examine the potential benefit of in-home parentally administered message therapy of a preterm infant. This case supports the hypothesis that in-home message therapy may improve the long-term growth outcomes of premature infants. The personal touch provided by this simple low-tech, low-cost, and low risk therapy should be seriously considered for premature infants.