Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Apr;26(2):296-308.
doi: 10.4094/chnr.2020.26.2.296. Epub 2020 Apr 30.

[Noise Level and Frequency Experienced by Premature Infants Receiving Incubator Care in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit]

[Article in Korean]
So Hyun Joo, Tae Im Kim

[Noise Level and Frequency Experienced by Premature Infants Receiving Incubator Care in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit]

[Article in Korean]
So Hyun Joo et al. Child Health Nurs Res. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the noise level and frequency experienced by premature infants receiving incubator care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Methods: The participants were 20 premature infants receiving incubator care in the NICU of a university hospital in Daejeon Metropolitan city. The noise level was measured using a professional sound-level meter (ET-958, FLUS, Shenzhen, China) based on a noise classification table developed by the author. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, the t-test, analysis of variance, and Pearson correlation coefficients using SPSS for Windows version 22.0.

Results: The average noise level experienced by premature infants receiving incubator care in the NICU was 51.25 dB (range: 45.0~81.7 dB). The frequency of noises was highest for factors related to nursing activities (40.3%), followed by human factors (29.1%), machine alarm sounds (20.1%), incubator operation (6.6%), and internal environmental factors (3.9%).

Conclusion: According to the above results, the noise level experienced by premature infants receiving incubator care in the NICU exceeded the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an interventional program to reduce noise in the NICU, and to conduct follow-up studies to verify its effectiveness.

Keywords: Neonatal intensive care units (NICU); Noises; Premature infant.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

No existing or potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

References

    1. Statistics Korea . 2018 annual report on live births and deaths statistics [Internet] Daejeon: Statistics Korea; 2019. [cited 2020 February 10]. Available from: http://kostat.go.kr/portal/korea/kor_nw/1/1/index.board?bmode=read&bSeq=....
    1. Olejnik BK, Lehman I. Inadvertent noise in neonatal intensive care unit and its impact on prematurely born infants. Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research. 2018;11(2):8346–8350. doi: 10.26717/BJSTR.2018.11.002063. - DOI
    1. Pineda RG, Tjoeng TH, Vavasseur C, Kidokoro H, Neil JJ, Inder T. Patterns of altered neurobehavior in preterm infants within the neonatal intensive care unit. The Journal of Pediatrics. 2013;162(3):470–476. doi: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2012.08.011. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sa MM, Azevedo R, Neves J, Machado O, Tavares J. Noise in an intensive care nursery/newborn unit. Journal of Health Education Research and Development. 2018;6(2):265. doi: 10.4172/2380-5439.1000265. - DOI
    1. Wachman EM, Lahav A. The effects of noise on preterm infants in the NICU. Archives of Disease in Childhood-Fetal and Neonatal Edition. 2011;96(4):F305–F309. doi: 10.1136/adc.2009.182014. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources