The effectiveness of the early habilitation complex in premature infants according to N.A. Bernstein’s concept

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Currently, the incidence of developmental disorders and the level of disability in premature infants, especially those born with a low and extremely low body weight, remain high, that determines the relevance of habilitation methods.
 AIM: to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of the early habilitation complex in premature infants with a perinatal brain damage when transferring to the stage III of rehabilitation.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included 86 patients born with a very low and extremely low body weight, who had a hypoxic-ischemic or hemorrhagic brain damage and were observed at the Children's Republican Clinical Hospital of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Tatarstan during the first three years of life. A comparative analysis of the development and functional outcomes of the disease was carried out for children of two groups. The first group, when transferred to the stage III of rehabilitation, was assigned a complex of early sensorimotor habilitation, developed on the basis of N.A. Bernsteins concept to be carried out at home for three months after an appropriate training. The second group was not prescribed such a complex.
 RESULTS: The effect of the early sensorimotor rehabilitation complex on the functional (motor, speech and cognitive) outcomes in prematurely born patients was evaluated and described. In the first group with an assigned complex of sensorimotor exercises, despite the absence of a significant effect by the age of 6 months, it was found by the age of one and a half years, that the average indices of the development of large (p=0.022) and fine motor skills (p=0.023), expressive speech (p=0.006) and cognitive functions (p=0.040) were higher, while, by the age of three years, the differences in speech (p=0.001) and cognitive (p=0.001) outcomes retained their statistical significance compared to the development indicators in children who did not receive the same early habilitation complex.
 CONCLUSION: It was found that premature infants who received the early habilitation complex had better speech and cognitive outcomes by the age of three, compared to patients who did not receive the complex. The significance of the positive influence on the ontogenesis of motor skills persists during the second year of life.