Polyethylene wrapping can help prevent heat loss by very premature infants when they’re born, a Canadian group of researchers report.

Dr. Barbara Schmidt of McMaster University, Hamilton, told AMN Health that wrapping these infants “in a transparent and thin sheet of plastic immediately after birth helps to keep them warm. As soon as the baby has been admitted to a special care nursery and placed inside a heated incubator, the wrap can be safely removed.”

Because these infants need to be kept warm, it’s currently recommended that they be rapidly dried under a radiant warmer right after delivery, Schmidt and her colleagues note in the Journal of Pediatrics. However, research has suggested that wrapping may be superior to conventional drying, particularly in infants born less than 28 weeks into pregnancy.

To investigate further, the Ontario ream randomly assigned 55 very premature infants to drying or placement in a polyethylene bag from the shoulders down with only the head dried, immediately after delivery.

Among the 53 infants who completed the study, their average temperature on admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was higher in the wrapped group than in controls (36.5 degrees C versus 35.6 degrees C).

The researchers found that size at birth was an important determinant of heat loss. Average temperature increased by 0.21 degrees C for each 100-gram increase in birth weight.

Overall, the team concludes that plastic wrapping “provides better thermal protection in the delivery room than conventional drying.”

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Gunnar Sedin of University Children’s Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden, notes that the method merits further study and that it is also important to find out if there is a “risk of damage to the immature skin.”

SOURCE: Journal of Pediatrics, December 2004.