05
Aug
2011
Chill that baby
Cooling a newborn who has suffered a lack of oxygen and possible brain damage during birth improves the baby’s chances, researchers report in the August Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. Neonatal units in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States randomly assigned 110 such infants to be cooled within six hours of birth to a whole-body state that was 3.5 degrees Celsius below normal, while 111 other such babies weren’t cooled. The chilling lasted 72 hours. Two years later, 27 of the cooled newborns had died, compared with 42 of the others. Also, 42 of the cooled babies were living free of any disability at age 2, compared with only 22 of the babies not chilled.
Nathan Seppa
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