A clinical nursing study: failure to thrive in a child with Down's syndrome

A five-year-old child with Down's syndrome and severe failure to thrive, given a program of individually tailored developmental nursing care, showed substantial improvement as evidenced by changes in seven of nine criteria chosen for measurement. When investigation of the child and his family suggested that the failure to thrive was the result of masked deprivation, a study was designed to measure the effect of a 17-day program of developmental nursing care on specific parameters of growth and behavior-height, weight amount of sleep, caloric intake, active mobility, awareness of the environment, prelanguage vocalizations, self-stimulation behavior, and play activity with toys. Data on these criteria were gathered before, during, and after the nursing care program. Findings supported the assumptions that there would be an increase in height, weight, amount of sleep, active mobility, awareness of the environment, prelanguage vocalizations and a decrease in self-stimulation. Findings did not support the assumptions that there would be an increase in caloric intake and play activity with toys. The study supported the use of nursing care as the primary therapeutic modality for children with this condition and illustrated an approach to systematic evaluation of the effects of nursing care.