Newborns Jaundice And Cerebral Palsy

Newborns Jaundice And Cerebral Palsy.
Newborns with significant jaundice are not promising to blossom a rare and life-threatening type of cerebral palsy if American Academy of Pediatrics' treatment guidelines are followed, according to a unfledged study. Jaundice is yellowing of the eyes and skin due to high levels of the liver-produced pigment bilirubin. In most cases, jaundice develops middle newborns because their liver is too new to break down the pigment quickly enough prescription. Usually, this condition resolves without treatment.

Some babies, however, must be told phototherapy. Exposure to special lights changes bilirubin into a compound that can be excreted from the body, according to the researchers. If phototherapy fails, a conduct called exchange transfusion may be required. During this invasive procedure, the infant's blood is replaced with benefactor blood site here. Recommendations for exchange transfusions are based on bilirubin level, the mature of the infant and other risk factors for brain damage.

Exchange transfusion isn't without risk. Potential complications from the curing include blood clots, blood compel instability, bleeding and changes in blood chemistry, according to the researchers. High bilirubin levels are also risky. They've been associated with a not joking form of cerebral palsy called kernicterus. In sort to investigate this association, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research examined information from two groups of more than 100000 infants.

The babies were delivered at one of 15 hospitals between 1995 and 2011. One band of nearly 1900 newborns had bilirubin levels above the American Academy of Pediatrics' door-sill for exchange transfusion. Babies in this group were followed for an so so of seven years. A second group included more than 104000 newborns who were born at least 35 weeks' gestation and had humiliate bilirubin levels. This group of infants was followed for six years.

The study, published on Jan 5, 2015 in JAMA Pediatrics, revealed three cases of kernicterus occurred in the midst the babies with the highest bilirubin levels. However, the researchers eminent all three of these children had additional peril factors for brain damage. "We found that cerebral palsy dependable with kernicterus did not occur in a single infant with high bilirubin without the presence of additional danger factors," said the study's second author, Dr Michael W Kuzniewicz, an aid professor of neonatology in the department of pediatrics at UC San Francisco, in a university item release.

So "This was the case even in infants with very high bilirubin," said Kuzniewicz, who is also head of the perinatal into or unit of the division of research at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. "Our swot was the first to evaluate how well the exchange transfusion guidelines predicted risk of cerebral palsy and kernicterus in babies with jaundice," said the study's leading investigator, Dr Thomas B Newman, with the departments of epidemiology and pediatrics at UC San Francisco.

And "It was reassuring that wit impairment due to high bilirubin was rare and that only those infants whose levels were well above exchange transfusion guidelines developed kernicterus," Newman said in the statement release. "Based on our study, the current guidelines for when to perform truck transfusions have been quite successful in preventing kernicterus," said the study's lead author, Dr Yvonne W Wu, a professor of clinical neurology and pediatrics at UC San Francisco, in the release medicine. "However, our chew over also raises the suspect whether the threshold for exchange transfusion could be higher for infants with acme bilirubin levels who are otherwise healthy and who have no other risk factors for brain injury.