The effect of body position on the arterial oxygen saturation of healthy premature neonates

Background: Since the first time, when the prone position was introduced as a therapeutic maneuver in lung diseases, numerous studies in both adult and pediatric subjects have almost uniformly reported an improvement in PaO2 in the prone position compared to supine. Aims and objective: This study was conducted to determine the effect of body position on the arterial oxygen saturation of healthy premature neonates in Vali-e-asr hospital, Zanjan, Iran. Method: In this trial, totally 88 healthy premature neonates which were just feeding and being prepared to discharge, randomly selected. The neonates first randomly placed in prone or supine position, and 30 min later SpO2 was measured during 30 minutes. Then, the infants turned from prone to supine or from supine to prone, and a repeat set of measurement was made. The collected data was analyzed by utilizing SPSS 11.5 for windows package, using Paired Sample T Test. Results: 60.2% (53 cases) of neonates were male and 39.8% (35 cases) were female. Their mean birth weight and gestational age were 2330.9 gram (range: 1080-3400) and 34.3 weeks (range: 26-36), respectively. Their mean postnatal age was 4.2 days (range: 1-28). Mean SpO2 of these neonates during 30 min in supine position was significantly higher than prone position (94.5±3.3 Vs 91.8±5; P Conclusion: These finding suggest that prone position have not offer any advantage over the supine position in the improvement of arterial oxygenation of healthy premature neonates.