Infant Swimming Research On The Impact Of Physical And Mental Development Fengtai District

ObjectivesTo explore effects of infant swimming during the time from42days old to12months old on children’s physical and psychological development based on infant swimming data between2008and2012in Beijing Fengtai Hospital for Maternal&Child Health. To study possible differences of effects of neonatal-period infant swimming and non-neonatal-period infant swimming on their physical and psychological development, aiming to evaluate effects of non-neonatal-period infant swimming on their physical and psychological development and to achieve reliable conclusions with practical, realistic and rigorous approach and scientific analysis. To give cool-headed consideration to the current hot campaign in infant swimming so as to avoid unnecessary loss or waste of related medical and healthcare resources brought about by theoretical misleading.MethodsThe method of retrospective case-control study was employed. Sample data of182infants born between2008and2011were collected in Beijing Fengtai Hospital for Maternal&Child Health. The182children were divided into two groups with58in the swimming group (28males and30females, who swam1to53times respectively during the time from42days old to12months old) and124in the control group (60males and64females who did not swim during their infant time).Clinical scales were used to measure the body weight and the lying length or standing height of the children in both groups. Gesell development diagnosis schedule was used to check their developmental quotients so as to make quantitative evaluation of the physical and neuropsychological development of the children in the two groups.Excel and SPSS were made use of for statistics and data analysis. ResultsOf the two groups of infants of2-24months old, there is no statistical significance (independent samples t-test, p>0.05) in such physical development as body weight, body length or growth rate. There is no statistical significance (independent samples t-test, p>0.05) between the two groups in terms of average annual growth rates of body weight and body length, weight SDS or length SDS.It is not statistically significant (one-way ANOVA, p>0.05) in terms of body weight, body length or growth rate between the three groups:the group of infants who swam ten times or more, the group who swam less than ten times and the control group.In neuropsychological development, there is no statistical significance (independent samples t-test, p>0.05) between the control group and the swimming group of the same-month-old infants in terms of the five Gesell assessments indicators of adaptive capacity, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, language development and development of personal-social abilities. There is no statistical significance (paired-samples t test, p>0.05) concerning pre and post swimming intervention in the swimming group and no statistical significance (paired-samples t test, p>0.05) is shown compared with the control group.ConclusionsThe study indicates that, with statistical analysis of packet data, there is no statistical significance between the swimming group and the control group in physical or neuropsychological development. And there is no obvious effect of42d-12m infant swimming on the physical or neuropsychological development of2m-24m children, as no obvious promotive or suppressive effect is seen.