Taylor Vassis – Health Sciences

A description of exposure to human voice of postsurgical infants with congenital heart disease


Considered the most prevalent birth defect in infants, Congenital heart defects (CHDs) often require early surgical intervention and an extended recovery period on cardiac units that contain many environmental stressors. These infants have a unique experience with environmental stimuli similar to those in the neonatal intensive care unit, but there has been little research to investigate these exposures with this population. The aim of this study was to measure and describe the postsurgical infant with CHDs experience with the environmental stimuli of human voice in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit (CTICU) and cardiac step down unit (SDU). Following parental consent, continuous video monitoring of 5 postsurgical infants with CHD was obtained using a GoPro Hero2 camera attached to the head of the infants bed. The videos were observed and coded for the presence and frequency of human voice in the infantsenvironments by the following types: talking to baby, talking to each other, and other patients. Following data analysis, it was determined that among each subject and day of recording, the exposure with the highest mean time in both the CTICU and SDU was talking to each other. In addition to this, talking to infant was the lowest voice exposure for each participant in both locations. Considering previous research with premature infants which demonstrates that reduced exposure to maternal voice within the hospital can negatively impact normal development, further research is recommended to identify the effects of limited person-infant interaction on infant recovery and devleopment in infants with CHD.

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