الفهرس 
PREMATURITYOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Many studies have shown how can the neonatal intensive care unit can be a stressful environment to babies and their parents, it also showed the beneficial effect of managing neonatal pain and stress which consequently can have a positive effect on parents.
Many NICU interventions represent neonatal stressors at different levels which have a negative effect on neonatal health, Most of these stressors cannot be avoided completely but some of them can be reduced or even avoided completely while keeping the best standard of care that’s why monitoring neonatal stress by the medical stuff can improve the quality of health care provided to neonates and their parents.
Parents of neonates admitted to NICU are exposed to many stressors as well being separated from their babies, unable to take care of them or helping to decrease their pain while having to watch surrounded by unfamiliar equipments, they are likely to suffer from stress disorders.
The current study was done to assess neonatal and parental stress during NICU admission and to study the correlation between prematurity, parental and neonatal stressor scales.
This cross sectional study included 100 preterm neonates who were admitted to NICU of maternity hospital of Ain Shams University during 2019and 2020, we included neonate who are less than 37 wks gestational age, with Egyptian biological parents to understand our questions well who agreed to participate in our study, admitted in NICU more than 7 days and their parents has visited them at least once during admission while neonates whose parents have cognitive limitations, significant psychiatric illness rather than that related to NICU admission or have family problems related to drug dependence and separation have been excluded also neonates who were chronically ill, admitted for surgical procedure or because of child abuse have been excluded as well.
Regarding Neonatal stress scale, our study assessed the average scores over 10 days of acute stressful procedures, chronic stressful procedures and total scores.
The highest level of stress in acute stressful procedures were in the third day and first day respectively and the highest level of stress in chronic stressful procedures were in the third day and second day respectively.
The most frequent painful procedures among the acute stressful procedures in our study were sampling blood gas, heel pricks, suctioning of nose and mouth and insertion of intravenous or intra arterial line respectively while the most frequent procedures among chronic procedures of neonatal stress were naso gastric tube in situ, intravenous or intra arterial line in situ, intra venous fluids, nursed in incubator and phototherapy respectively.
Regarding parental stress scale, total score was assessed, parental stress scale showed that the highest level of stress was in parental role alternations subclass while sounds and images subclass and baby appearance subclass which were almost close in the level of stress.
In assessing the correlation of the two mentioned scores with neonates demographic data, our study showed a significant negative correlation between both total level of stress in parental stress scale and total neonatal stress scale and gestational age. Moreover, it showed a significant positive correlation between both total level of stress in parental stress scale and total neonatal stress scale and pre-term neonates with gestational age less than 32 weeks, nasogastric tube feeding and NICU stay duration and baby’s death.
In assessing the correlation of the two mentioned scores with parents’ demographic data, our study showed a significant positive correlation between total level of stress in parental stress scale and total neonatal stress score while there was a significant negative correlation between total parental stress score and number of babies in family.
Also, our study showed a significant positive correlation between total level of stress in parental stress scales and total neonatal stress scale.
More studies are needed to understand different aspects of neonatal stress and how it can tremendously affect parental psychological health as well as neonatal medical and neurodevelopmental health.