Skin-to-skin care—placing an infant on a caregiver’s bare chest for feeding or bonding—may benefit very preterm infants’ neurodevelopment, suggests a study funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Researchers found that very preterm newborns who received more skin-to-skin care during their time in a newborn intensive care unit scored higher on a test of neurodevelopment at 12 months, compared to those who received less skin-to-skin time. The authors concluded that in-hospital, skin-to-skin care shows promise as a low-cost, family-centered intervention to foster infant development.
The study was conducted by Molly Lazarus and Katherine Travis, Ph.D., of Weill Cornell Medical College and their colleagues. It appears in The Journal of Pediatrics.
Background
Skin-to-skin care, 
also called kangaroo care, was developed to keep newborns warm and to promote breast feeding. Its benefits include stabilizing infant heartbeat and breathing, encouraging weight gain, and reducing crying. Researchers have theorized that skin-to-skin care could foster infant neurodevelopment by relieving stress and providing favorable stimulation in an intensive care unit, which is often bright and noisy. However, little research has been conducted on the potential longer-term effects of skin-to-skin care on infant’s cognitive development.
Results
For the current study, researchers reviewed the hospital records of 181 very preterm infants (those born before 32 weeks of gestation) to track the total number of minutes of skin-to-skin per day each infant received during their hospital stay. The totals were compared to scores the infants received on a neurological evaluation when they were 12 months of age (corrected for prematurity).
On average, infants received 18 minutes of skin-to-skin care each day. Some infants received as many as 50 minutes per day, while others didn’t receive any, often due to ongoing medical treatment. Each 20-minute increase in skin-to-skin care per day was linked to a 10-point increase in neurodevelopmental test scores at 12 months.
Significance
According to the authors, the findings suggest that skin-to-skin care could promote very preterm infants’ cognitive development. In the future, hospitals could educate families on these benefits and provide more opportunities for caregivers to engage in skin-to skin-care for preterm infants. On a societal level, parental leave polices could also be modified to allow families to spend more time with their hospitalized infants.
Reference
Lazarus, MF, et al. Inpatient skin-to-skin care predicts 12-month neurodevelopmental outcomes in very preterm infants. The Journal of Pediatrics. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2024.114190
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