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Despite their importance for new babies, researchers have found that incubators can expose babies to louder, reverberating sounds that increase the risk of damaging their sensitive hearing.
The new study was published in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics, where noise in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and its effect on patients at risk was the subject of the study, and the focus was on incubators in which babies spend their first days. , weeks, or sometimes even months.
Scientists from the Medical University of Vienna (MUV), in collaboration with scientists from Hamburg, Munich and Osnabrück, discovered that through detailed acoustic measurements taken from complex simulations of models inside and outside the incubators, certain frequencies resonate within the space, increasing noise of up to 28 decibels.
Study co-researcher Christoph Reuter said: “The motivation of our multidisciplinary research team is related to the question: why do many premature babies suffer hearing loss”, expressing his belief that the measurements made in the context of the study “could”. be an important reason.” “But, to understand how to protect premature babies from high noise levels, accurate information about the environment is needed.”
In addition, the American Academy of Pediatrics has warned that the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is a noisy environment, often exceeding 45 decibels, which causes hearing loss in 2-10% of premature babies who need incubators, compared to 0.1% in newborns. Births that do not spend their first hours or days in intensive care units.
