Cardiorespiratory and transcutaneous oxygen monitoring of high-risk preterms receiving systematic stroking

This paper reports on a study which examined the immediate physiological effects of systematic stroking on a sample of high-risk ventilated preterms. The aim was to determine whether physiological changes, positive or negative were induced by systematic stroking of these at-risk infants. Heart rate, respiration rate and TcPO 2 (transcutaneous arterial oxygen tension) were collected simultaneously before, during and after the systematic stroking intervention using computerised data recordings. The results found suggested that the stroking intervention appears to have had no harmful effects as reflected in the absence of a significant heart rate increase or a TcPO 2 drop, patterns which would have been indicative of infant distress, and thus safe to be applied to a sample with the same characteristics as the one recruited for this study.