Effectiveness of Oil Massage on Weight Gain and Selected Physiological Parameters among Preterm Babies in Selected Hospitals

Premature babies experience problems like difficulty in breathing due to immature lungs, difficulty in maintaining body temperature, problems in feeding due to difficulty in sucking or coordinating breathing and swallowing and increased risk of infection. A baby that is born prematurely often has a low birth weight. Premature babies have more difficulty gaining weight because they use the available calories for healing as well as growing For newborn babies, weight gain is one indicator of health. While most newborn babies initially lose a little weight, Medline Plus advises that most premature infants should start showing signs of weight gain within a few days after birth. Tiny infants may gain only 5g a day, while larger premature babies may see a daily weight gain around 20g. Infant Massage is found to be more useful when some kind of lubricant oil is used. Various oil preparations are used depending on the regional availability, the common oils used are safflower and coconut oil. It has been shown that infant massage accelerates recovery of the skin barrier function, improve weight, improve skin condition and reduce the risk barrier function and neonatal mortality. METHODOLOGY A quasi-experimental-non equivalent control group design was adopted to assess the effectiveness of oil massage on weight gain among preterm babies in selected hospitals, at Nellore, Andhra Pradesh. The sample size was 60 preterm babies and the purposive sampling was used for selection of subjects. Among them 30 preterm babies were assigned to experimental group and 30 to control group. Pre test was done by using Questionnaire to obtain socio demographic data of child and mother and observational checklist to assess physiological parameters and daily weight monitoring. Following the pre test, intervention with infant massage was given to the preterm babies in the experimental group with oil massage with naturally available coconut oil of 15-20ml/kg/body wt/session in 2 phases of tactile and kinaesthetic stimulation for 3 times in a day for 15 mts for 7 days. Post test was done on 8th day for the babies in both experimental and control group with the same electronic weighing machine to assess the effectiveness of oil massage and same observation checklist for assessing selected physiological parameters. RESULTS The study shows that majority of preterm babies in experimental group, were 20 (66.7 %) babies had 10-30gms of weight gain, 8 (26.6) babies had 31-60gms of weight gain and 2 (6.7 %) babies had more than 60gms of weight gain after oil massage therapy whereas in control group 29 (96.7 %) babies had no weight gain and 1 (3.3) baby had 10-30gms of weight gain without oil massage therapy. The calculated value of independent -t- test is 1.94 and table value is 1.69 at P=