Avaliação das respostas fisiológicas e funcionais dos recém-nascidos de baixo peso em incubadora frente à exposição a ruídos em uma unidade neonatal

Abstract

The incorporation of technologies for the newborn care contributes to the increase of its survival, but transformed the neonatal units into noisy places. The possible noise’s harmful effects in environment on preterm infants are mentioned in literature, since these low weight infants are considered more susceptible to auditory complications. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects resulting from the exposure to usual noises in low weight newborn inside incubators. The methodology used was the quantitative approach, of exploratory-descriptive design, and the statistic method was the frequency table, descriptive statistic and the paired Student T Test, at significance level of 0,05. For the data collection’s instrument was used the APIB scale [Assessment of Preterm Infant Behavior) validated in 1982 by Als, which is a tool largely used for evaluation of preterm infants’ behavior and specifically designed to document preterm infants’ neurobehavioral functions. The data collection occurred between 09/27/2012 and 04/01/2013, with daily frequency, about approximately 30 minutes for each observation, in two periods per day. 61 interned low weight newborn inside incubators were observed at the Neonatal Unit. After the data’s analysis, the results show the existence of significant differences in both variables ‘cardiac frequency’ and ‘oxygen saturation’. The conclusion of the research is that the low weight newborn inside incubators has physiological and functional alterations when exposed to discomfort caused by environmental noise.