Active clinical trials for "Premature Birth"

The purpose of this study is to pilot an intervention that was developed to improve uptake and adhere to an Individualized Prematurity Prevention Plan (IP3) for preterm birth prevention. Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) women are at higher risk for preterm birth compared to other racial and ethnic groups. Building on qualitative data from NHB women with input from a multidisciplinary stakeholder group, a patient-centered intervention was developed to improve uptake and adherence to an IP3 in NHB women.

This study is designed to determine if an intracervical balloon catheter (IBC) is better than oxytocin for induction of labor in the setting of premature rupture of membranes (PROM) or breaking the bag of water prior to onset of labor. The investigators suspect that an intracervical balloon catheter will shorten the time interval from initiation of induction of labor to delivery.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of dopamine which is used as treatment of hypotension in neonate and preterm infant.

Preterm infants are at risk for feeding problems which can persist through early childhood. These feeding problems may include oral motor, sensory, digestive, nutritional, respiratory, and/or behavioral components. In North Carolina's early intervention program, speech pathologists or occupational therapists are responsible for completing feeding evaluations, and may not know when to refer infants out to medical specialists to address these other domains. This study will test a decision support tool in hypothetical feeding evaluation scenarios. The hypothetical scenarios will consist of real feeding videos of preterm infants who recently participated in a multidisciplinary feeding evaluation. Parent-reported outcomes of the infant's real evaluation will be compared to those of the speech pathologists and occupational therapists in our study who do, and do not, use the decision support tool. The investigators hypothesize that therapists with the tool will make recommendations that are closer to those of the multidisciplinary team, and that they will find the tool useful and easy to use. Due to recruitment limitations with families, the study was adapted in October, 2021 prior to enrollment of subjects to use case studies, rather than infant videos, as the hypothetical situation from which to test the tool. Therapists will then answer clinical questions without using the tool when viewing the first case study, and will use the tool to answer questions when viewing the second case study. Order of case study presentation will be randomized among participants.

The objective of the study was to evaluated the feasibility and reproducibility of the measurement of lung elasticity report / fetal liver according to gestational age in a group of patients with a normal course of pregnancy and in a group of Patients at risk of preterm delivery.

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a blinding disease affecting infants born prematurely. These infants do not have enough essential fatty acids to structurally support the retina, the nerve tissue in the eye which allows us to see. A recent study showed that giving omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids to these infants soon after birth made them less likely to need invasive treatments for eye disease. This research trial will give young infants born prematurely n-3 fish oil treatment and look at how this changes factors in the blood that promote disease. Detailed blood studies comparing infants with and without ROP will be performed and the infants will be followed over time to assess their eye development.

Premature infants with iron deficiency if supplemented with more elemental iron than the routine 2mg/kg/day will have improved brain development.

The aim of this study was to assess the impact of an early psychological intervention, Triadic parent-infant Relationship Therapy (TRT), on parenting stress, parental mental health, and preterm infant development in the motor, cognitive, emotional and behavioral domains at a corrected age of 18 months.

Preterm birth and perinatal events related can interrupt microscopic maturation of the developing white matter leading to diffuse injury and subsequent neurocognitive impairments. Brain maturation can be studied using diffusion tensor imaging but is difficult to assess early after birth, repeatedly and at the bedside. Supersonic Shear wave Imaging (SSI) could be of interest in this clinical setting. This technique, already investigated in adults (breast, thyroid or liver fibrosis staging), has not been yet evaluated in neonates. Objective: To describe the feasibility and reproducibility of quantitative elasticity mapping in preterm infants and to correlate to gestational age. Methods: SSI is a quantitative stiffness imaging technique based on the combination of a remote palpation induced into tissues by the radiation force a focused ultrasonic beam and an ultrafast ultrasound imaging sequence. Such ultrafast frame rates permit to track in real time the displacements induced by the propagation of the resulting shear waves. For each pixel, the shear wave speed can be estimated locally and enables quantitative mapping of the local shear elasticity (characterizing the stiffness in kPa). In this study, we will use a new generation of ultrafast ultrasound scanners (Aixplorer®, Supersonic Imagine, Aix en Provence, France) with a linear L10-2 probe (256 elements, 6 MHz) in neonates born between 25 and 40 weeks' gestation (n=100). Three separate acquisitions will be obtained for each area of interest both on right and left sides and stiffness was measured using a unique ROI of 2.5 cm².

Investigators hypothesize that a) probiotics decrease the overall inflammatory state in the pregnant woman, especially in women with high risk pregnancies.