Critically ill infants who are old enough to move on their own but too young to cooperate with care instructions have been among the last to benefit from patient mobility initiatives.

Results from a holding intervention in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri, may help change that.

Concerns for patient safety and medical device removal, lack of resources and disagreement about when patients are sufficiently stable are among the barriers to mobility interventions in the PICU, especially for infants.

The researchers addressed many of these barriers as part of a study of a holding intervention of infants intubated for acute respiratory failure.

They found that holding intubated infants was well tolerated and safe, with no unplanned extubations and no changes in vital signs in 158 holding episodes.

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