Table 3. Characteristics of randomised newborns in the included RCTs and information on health professionals’ involvement.
| Overalln=146 | MICn=28 | HICn=118 | RCTsup to 2016n=93 | RCTs after 2016n=53 | |||
| n (%) | n (%) | n (%) | Pvalue | n (%) | n (%) | Pvalue | |
| Characteristics of randomised newborns | |||||||
| Number of randomised newborns | |||||||
| ≤50 | 34 (23.3) | 726 | 27 (22.9) | 0.812 | 23 (24.7) | 11 (20.8) | 0.585 |
| 51–100 | 28 (19.2) | 7 (25) | 21 (17.8) | 0.384 | 15 (16.1) | 13 (24.5) | 0.215 |
| 101–200 | 45 (30.8) | 4 (14.3) | 41 (34.7) | 0.041 | 33 (35.5) | 12 (22.6) | 0.106 |
| 201–300 | 12 (8.2) | 1 (3.6) | 11 (9.3) | 0.463 | 10 (10.8) | 2 (3.8) | 0.140 |
| >300 | 8 (5.5) | 1 (3.6) | 7 (5.9) | >0.999 | 2 (2.2) | 6 (11.3) | 0.027 |
| Not specified | 19 (13) | 8 (28.6) | 11 (9.3) | 0.012 | 10 (10.8) | 9 (17.0) | 0.282 |
| Classification by gestational age* | n=127 | n=25 | n=102 | n=77 | n=50 | ||
| Term (≥37 weeks) | 9 (7.3) | 3 (12.0) | 94.1) | 0.378 | 6 (7.8) | 3 (6.4) | 0.535 |
| Late preterm (34–36+6 weeks) | 53 (41.7) | 16 (60.0) | 37 (36.3) | 0.012 | 35 (45.5) | 18 (36.0) | 0.291 |
| Moderate preterm (32–33+6 weeks) | 87 (68.5) | 22 (88.0) | 65 (63.8) | 0.029 | 53 (86.8) | 34 (68.0) | 0.922 |
| Very preterm (28–31+6 weeks) | 118 (92.9) | 23 (92.0) | 95 (93.1) | >0.999 | 72 (93.5) | 46 (92.0) | 0.747 |
| Extremely preterm (<28 weeks) | 95 (74.8) | 12 (48.0) | 83 (81.4) | 0.001 | 61 (79.2) | 34 (68.0) | 0.155 |
| Classification by birth weight* | n=49 | n=9 | n=40 | n=38 | n=11 | ||
| LBW (1500–2500 g) | 25 (51.0) | 7 (77.8) | 18 (45.0) | 0.138 | 18 (47.4) | 7 (63.6) | 0.342 |
| VLBW (1000–1499 g) | 40 (81.6) | 6 (66.7) | 34 (85.0) | 0.336 | 32 (84.2) | 8 (72.7) | 0.386 |
| ELBW (<1000 g) | 40 (81.6) | 5 (55.6) | 35 (87.5) | 0.046 | 33 (86.8) | 7 (63.6) | 0.179 |
| RCTs involving health professionals | |||||||
| Involved in the intervention delivery† | 137 (93.8) | 26 (92.9) | 111 (94.1) | 0.683 | 87 (93.5) | 50 (94.3) | >0.999 |
| Involved as receiver of an educational component‡ | 81 (55.5) | 6 (21.4) | 75 (63.6) | <0.001 | 56 (60.2) | 25 (47.2) | 0.176 |
In most RCTs the involvement of health professionals was not detailed clearly distinguishing between those involved in the delivery of a FCC intervention and those receiving it.
p-value < 0.05 in bold.
Only a subset of studies provided this information, specifically, gestational age was available for 127 studies and birth weight for 49 studies; each RCT could include more than one category of gestational age/birth weight category; classifications by gestational age and by birth weight are taken from UpToDate, available at https://www.uptodate.com/contents/image?imageKey=PEDS%2F119362 (accessed on 10 May 2023).
Here we included those RCTs where an ‘involvement’ of any health worker in the intervention delivery was explicitly stated.
Here we included RCTs where an “involvement” of health worker as receivers of an educational interventions was explicitly stated.
ELBWextremely low birth weightHICshigh-income countriesLBWlow birth weightRCTsrandomised controlled trialsVLBWvery low birth weight