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  • Original Article
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Early interventions involving parents to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes of premature infants: a meta-analysis

Journal of Perinatology volume 29, pages 343–351 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Objective:

To determine in a systematic review, whether interventions for infant development that involve parents, improve neurodevelopment at 12 months corrected age or older.

Study Design:

Randomized trials were identified where an infant intervention was aimed to improve development and involved parents of preterms; and long-term neurodevelopment using standardized tests at 12 months (or longer) was reported.

Result:

Identified studies (n=25) used a variety of interventions including parent education, infant stimulation, home visits or individualized developmental care. Meta-analysis at 12 months (N=2198 infants) found significantly higher mental (N=2198) and physical (N=1319) performance scores favoring the intervention group. At 24 months, the mental (N=1490) performance scores were improved, but physical (N=1025) performance scores were not statistically significant. The improvement in neurodevelopmental outcome was not sustained at 36 months (N=961) and 5 years (N=1017).

Conclusion:

Positive clinically meaningful effects (>5 points) are seen to an age of 36 months, but are no longer present at 5 years.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge Pamela Klebenov Center for Research on Child Wellbeing Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA; for providing 12- and 24-month BSID data from the IHDP; Jennifer Aylward for assisting with the literature search and data extraction; and Bo Zhang for reviewing-translating Chinese manuscripts. Funding/support: none.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    J A Vanderveen & H Kirpalani

  2. Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    J A Vanderveen

  3. Department of Neonatology, University Children's Hospital Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany

    D Bassler

  4. Department of Pediatrics, Section of Neurosciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    C M T Robertson

  5. Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, USA

    H Kirpalani

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  1. J A Vanderveen
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  2. D Bassler
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  4. H Kirpalani
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Correspondence to H Kirpalani.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Journal of Perinatology website (http://www.nature.com/jp).

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Vanderveen, J., Bassler, D., Robertson, C. et al. Early interventions involving parents to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes of premature infants: a meta-analysis. J Perinatol 29, 343–351 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2008.229

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