Light Cycling for ROP

[tkrahn]

Hi everyone. This is my first time posting, but I've been reading through all of your posts for a long time now. I've been a NICU nurse for about a year now and I've been asked to do my first "project". Our unit has been trying to make a consitent policy for how we do light cycling. Right now the NNPs just put in random times for various babies. I've been looking around for some research on light cycling and ROP but I'm not coming up with a whole lot. I talked to another nurse who did a small project on it during her capstone with NICU for school and she said she couldn't find a lot of info either. How do your units handle ROP and light cycling? Do you light cycle at all? I've read that it's done for the infant's circadian rhythm but we don't light cycle for that reason at all. Our unit is a little backwards on things. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[rnkaytee]

I didn't read over the whole site (wowza!) but it would be pretty easy to look through the actual articles that are cited (page 2) and see if they're useful. Can you get in touch with a doc who does your ROP exams and see what they have? I've also had good luck contacting the study authors directly - they're usually happy to share what they know and have researched.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

The article was also written in 1998, I can tell you that we weren't as conscious about oxygen them as we are now and we had a lot of kids with bad ROP and some that had to go for buckle procedures. I would really take that article with a grain of salt and there isn't much EBP in there.

[rnkaytee]

Here's another article that I found when I googled "light cycling in the NICU and ROP". The first paragraphs seem to suggest that light cycling doesn't do much, there's one study that shows a decrease in ROP with cycling. The whole article is interesting, about all the things that impact these little patients. Iatrogenic Environmental Hazards in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

[wooh, BSN, RN]

I would go to the MD that thinks this is useful and say you're working on it for a project, could he get you the articles he's found that support the idea.

I would wonder if the only reason light cycling helps with ROP (where I guess a few studies have found a correlation) is it helps with growth and well-being from great circadian rhythms and the overall increase in wellness keeps the eyes a little healthier. Not that lights are exacerbating the ROP directly.

[tkrahn]

Thank you everyone for your input. I talked to the nurse that asked me to take this on with her and told her what I found. She couldn't believe that I couldn't find any supporting evidence but was thrilled that this could go a step in a different direction. She called our head Neo and told him what I found. He said that he's never been able to find any supporting evidence either and has never really liked the idea of doing LC for ROP. He said that if the other neo wanted a focus on that, then he should be doing it and we shouldn't be doing the work for him. She told him that I did find a lot of evidence for light cycling and circadian rhythms and there are studies on babies overall heath improving and much more. He said that is a focus we should have been doing for a long time now and thinks it's wonderful if we take it in that direction. We're pretty excited that we could be actually changing something around here in our unit. (doesn't happen a lot here.) This can encourage other floor nurses in our unit to step up and look into changing other things as well. Thanks again!

[apple5000]

I've never heard of light cycling for ROP, but the hospital I currently work in as a traveler is participating in a research study for it using a drug called Inositol. This drug will hopefully decrease the development of ROP. Has anyone heard of this drug?

[tkrahn]

I haven't heard of it. But if I come across it in our unit, I'll look into it more.